A Story About Ants

The following story has a moral in it somewhere, I am not entirely sure at which point or when; but it is in there. For this reason, it will be told in the form of a medieval fable with approximations of the personages involved allegorically approximated as small animals and such according to a set of psychometric algorithms and personality tests far too elaborate for me to go into in any significant depth at this time. For the sake of comprehensibility, I will introduce the characters of our fable as such: The Molerat, a peculiar figure possibly suffering from chronic mercurial intoxication or some like disorder and greatly enjoying caves; The Prairie Dog, a skilled artist; The Yorkshire Terrier (hereafter referred to as “Yorky”), an unskilled artist who suffers a horrific fate; The Jackrabbit, sort of the athletic type; The Ermine, a supposedly cynical musician; and The Towering Egret, physically and most-likely intellectually greater than those around him.

This ersatz menagerie had just arrived at a remote but surprisingly luxuriant lodge in the limestone cave-riddled wilderness of north Siam on the eve of the ants. The caretaker of this pleasant establishment--an antipodean mountaineer and one-time autobiographer by the name of John--was pleased to allow our protagonists to stay at his lodge and explore the surrounding geological situation for several days, all the while consistently enjoying a wide range of blended fruitshakes and the occasional kangaroo curry. Making plans to explore a cavern large enough to potentially house much of The Vatican and filled with enough swift’s nests to feed the entire Khmer Empire, everyone left the comfort of their two-level bungalow to wander the gloom of the subterranea for a few hours. Shortly before leaving, Yorky ascended the ladder to the second level in order to strike up a brief conversation about the physics of djinn-induced exocrine abnormalities with Egret while finishing a banana shake:


YORKY: What if someone was a profuse sweater, but only had one sweat gland on their entire body? would it be like a powerful, concentrated stream whenever they sweated?

EGRET: No, they would sweat the same amount but only out of that one pore; most likely causing little more than a truly grotesque case of prickly heat.

YORKY: But what if that didn’t happen...what if there was like, genie magic or something involved.

EGRET: No, you see Yorky, there are some things that are simply mechanically impossible. For instance, St. Anselm conceived of God as a perfect being, but failed to ever lay out any sort of logical basis for how an entity could be a perfect being in every way without also, contradictorily, being perfect at being imperfect...

YORKY: Yeah, but subjectively...


And the argument went on and on and on; until finally both parties had to leave for the caves. Yorky absentmindedly left his mostly empty fruitshake mug sitting on the edge of the upper floor floorboards; this simple detail would soon come back to haunt everyone involved.

Later that night; Egret, Ermine, Jackrabbit, Molerat, and Yorky returned to the bungalow (Prairie Dog was temporarily off on a prior engagement). Yorky almost immediately retreated into the bathroom in order to use the small, Japanese-branded cleanliness device in there in order to rinse himself of accumulated mud and sweat from his hypothetical single sweat-gland. Meanwhile, Molerat couldn’t help but notice a few small black ants scouting around the edge of his sleeping mat. Anxiously pulling up the surrounding bedding materials, the ‘rat’s seemingly irrational fears were confirmed by an almost mechanically circulating swarm of both small black, as well as considerably more intimidating largish black-and-red ants. Almost immediately, the entire common-room of the bungalow was whipped up into a grand frenzy of panic and disappointed rage. Toweling himself off at this time, Yorky was terrified to hear nearly all of his roommates making claims upon his life and continued well being. Perhaps standing out most among these threats was Molerat’s simple, concise, and to the point utterance of “Yorky is dead!” as he spasmodically rocked back and forth in the grips of predatory excitement.

Ignoring primal adrenal messages to climb out the lavatory window and flee through the depths of the nigh-impenetrable teak and camphor woodlands--maybe crossing the Burmese border and starting a new life as a low-level government informant on the off-chance he wasn’t reduced to canine gruyere by the border guards--Yorky chose to take the high road and bravely face whatever it was that was coming to him.

It seems that our menagerie decided likewise to show a modicum of mercy toward the unfortunate terrier; allowing him to suffer no worse than verbal abuse so long as he removed the offending glassware from the now ant-infested bungalow as quickly as possible. But suddenly, Jackrabbit called out from the bathroom with a terrible fury; YORKY...HAD...LEFT...THE...TOILET...PAPER...IN...THE SHOWER!

This second incident proved only supplementary to the rapidly growing pandemonium consuming this small two-level dwelling in the jungle. But Jackrabbit now had a plan; unzipping his backpack, he unveiled several bottles worth of pure, 100%, all-american, low-calorie, sugar-free, Atkins-approved and maybe even probiotic N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide (i.e. DEET). Armed with a warrior’s arsenal of potentially very unhealthy volatile chemical agents; Ermine, Jackrabbit, and Molerat set to work eradicating the insect invaders on the upper floor while Egret worked below. It was during this time that Egret requested the return of a bottle of glycerine that Ermine had been using to create an impenetrable ring of poison around the vertically advancing swarm ascending the side of the ladder. Unfortunately, Ermine absentmindedly took Egret’s request to “drop the bottle down” to him all too literally; shattering the fragile plastic bottle and depriving Egret of an unreasonable amount of hand sanitizer, much to his chagrin. But the worst was still to come; as the distinctive sound of shattering glass sent a shockwave of stupefied silence rippling throughout the bungalow; a silence broken only by Ermine and Molerat’s sardonic laughter.


YORKY: It’s okay guys, it’s okay. Nothing worth panicking about, really. It’s just that glass is sometimes slippery; and I guess this was just one of those times. It’s fine! It’s fine! I’ll clean it up! I swear!

EGRET: No, you have caused enough mayhem tonight. I will clean it up.


And so Egret, risking unnecessary bleeding and embedded glass injuries, thoroughly cleaned up each and every splinter of broken glass in the bungalow doorway while everyone else finished drowning every last ant that could be seen in a chemical bath. Prairie dog made his extremely inopportune reappearance around this time; but after a quick update on the madness that had transpired, almost immediately turned tail and left. Finally deciding that they had basically rendered their sleeping area safe--save for a few ambient toxic fumes--everyone else decided to call it a night and deal further with the entire situation in the morning.

But then, just as the lights go out and everyone is settling in; a sudden, raucous stream of phantom profanity came tearing through the night air. Despite initial concerns that he was just faking Tourette’s Syndrome for attention; a panic-stricken Yorky could now be seen dancing to-and-fro erratically, trying to shake off the worker caste of a new and unseen swarm of ants. A second, even greater, mechanically circulating insectile menace lurked just beneath Yorky’s mattress. The apparent attractant not a fruitshake but a generic, locally branded milk-flavoured wafer. And if I had space for the things that now wizened and withered wreck of a cookie had been through...you wouldn’t even believe the stories I could tell you about it...your eyes would pop out of you’re sockets with indignant shock...you would never be able to comfortably eat melon again...you’re perspective on nylon clothing-items would be soundly rocked...you would...Alright, never mind, enough about the wafer back to the main story.

So with the real source of the infestation revealed; the wafer along with all of Yorky’s bedding materials were swiftly removed from the room and tossed into the surrounding jungle. Soon; our entire crew of intrepid, small animal-themed allegories decided that the interior of the bungalow was no longer inhabitable on account of the dense miasma of insect repellant and hand sanitizing-product fumes currently building within. As they opened the doors in order to allow the room to vent it’s toxic payload; everyone noticed a large number of exotic insects of all descriptions fleeing the bungalow in much the same manner as swifts from a thai cave. As the flocks of phasmids, bush crickets, katydids, beetles, shieldbugs, cockroaches, and perhaps even a flower mantid or two all made their escape from the diethyl-toluamide gas chamber out into the surrounding teak. Egret, Ermine, Jackrabbit, Molerat, and Yorky were left with no choice but to stand helplessly outside their domicile, silently pondering the quixotic chatter of the jungle universe around them and waiting for the gas to clear. As everyone waited, Prairie Dog returned again; and hearing of traveling companions plight, invited them all to head down to the river and do some frog-hunting; everyone obliged except for Molerat. Molerat instead chose to silently wander the night, perhaps searching for and pondering that ancient, lost truth “everything is a mouth in one sense or another, everything is food in one sense or another, now is the time to eat”; it is very difficult to determine what is going through the mind of such a strange creature at any given time.

Later that night, after everyone had decided it was safe to return to the bungalow...

PRAIRIE DOG: I think it would, perhaps, be a good idea to start a fast food chain; it could dominate all of the the universe. It could serve french fries as one of the menu items, only these fries would be covered in cocaine rather than salt; and would be titled on the menu as “FRIES!!!”

ERMINE: Would you like some “FRIES!!!” with that?

PRAIRIE DOG: Exactly! Also, have you ever thought of the idea of a device that could clone any person, from anywhere in history, at any given time‽ What if you had a restaurant that served dishes composed of famous historical figures as their main ingredient. You could have like...Roast Shank of Henry VIII or George Washington a la King, or maybe even Hitlerwurst.

JACKRABBIT: Country Fried Jesus!

MOLERAT: Lenin Kiev, a dish who’s extravagance serves as bitter poetic justice for a notable marxist leader.

EGRET: Edgar Allen Poe’s liver would likely be of similar quality to a fine foie gras.

ERMINE: Any dish made from Nietzsche would have to be garnished by his moustache.

YORKY: Mother Theresa Nuggets!!!

JACKRABBIT: I think this may be the worst conversation anyone has ever had in history.

PRAIRIE DOG: Now consider this; what if you were to use this same sort of hypothetical cloning technology on yourself? You could create and eat an exact doppleganger for the exclusive purpose of the culinary arts.

MOLERAT: But then, can you imagine this; consciously comprehending in the deepest depths of your brain that you are eating your brain.

YORKY: That is far out!

PRAIRIE DOG: Okay, now I just had an even weirder idea; Imagine that same kind of cloning used for a brothel.