Last time I was in Africa, I was busy doing a poetry project for Hope College credit. I wrote a lovely little poem about a trail of ants that hit a roadblock, and even put it with a picture into the poetry calendar I made. The little 6-legged creatures seemed so nice, interesting, nonchalant at the time.
That was before the war began.
It seems the ants in Kenya are different than those in Tanzania... or, at least, my perspective is. The little guys that are forever winding from the crack in my wall, across my doorway, and into the kitchen... or the big guys that appear in my bathroom by the hundreds after a trip to the beach (that, by the way, make a little kerplunk sounds when you spray them and they all drop from the ceiling... yuck!), just don't seem all that idealistic and cute anymore. More like annoying, forgetful (didn't we just kill your cousin yesterday?), and unstoppable.
Is it bad that I thoroughly enjoy drowning the ones that make it into my sink? I also have to laugh when we have ant-infested (insert name of food here) that we promptly stick into the freezer. This eventually kills them, so you can take the food out, brush off the ants, and eat the food ant-free! (Or mostly, anyway...)
Perhaps one day, I will again enjoy and look at a string of ants with pleasure. But for now, they have made themselves my very own enemies. And the only way they'll win is if they decide to move back to the out-of-doors - and stay there!
(P.S. Termites, found all over my Houghton-Mifflin books, in my student workbooks, in my store cupboard, and around my wooden curtain rod, are a close second on the list. They were actually crawling out of the bindings of my school books at one point! Gross!)
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