Ant Farms

Hundreds of them.

no. thousands.

every ten feet or so.

Ants erupting

from the gap between

the sidewalk and the curb 

on Avenue B.

A mass evacuation,

some alert passed

from nest to nest?

mobilized for battle

or immanent disaster?

The little black ones

that mom and her sisters

called sugar ants.

Maybe because

how if you left out

anything sweet,

a couple bites of berry pie

on the counter.

or missed some spilled

RC Cola on the floor,

in the morning it would be

crawling with a crew of ants

hauling bits in a long caravan

to some crevice

under the cupboard

or the stove.

sugar ants sure don't

smell sweet when you

rub them off your arm.

they smell like some

kind of bitter mineral.

I can bring it to mind

right now.

if you had an invasion

in the the house

it was a pestilence.

but Uncle Milton's Ant Farms

sold millions as a novelty.

You bought the slim

clear plastic case

with the silhouettes

of a barn and a silo

farm animals,

some sand to fill it

and a certificate to

mail to Uncle Milton

to get your ants.

Put them in the farm

and watch them build

their tunnels. Feed them

sugar water and tiny bits

of fruit. A few weeks or

months later they all died.

It's only natural, the lifespan

of harvester ants is brief.

Then the farm sat on a shelf

gathering dust unless you

were as fascinated by ants

as Edmund O. Wilson.

There were other kinds

of ants on grandpa's farm

down in the San Joaquin Valley.

The little red ones.

The ones who bite.

The ones who swarmed your feet

if you weren't careful

playing out in the melon field

or the barnyard.

I heard about a new kind of ant problem

down along the Gulf Coast

a species that is attracted to

electronic equipment.

Like transformers. Air conditioners.

Televisions. Laptops. Cell Phones.

They're called Crazy Ants.

Invaders from Brazil and Argentina.

Could become a real serious thing.

Suppose you're tapping and clicking

away on your favorite social media,

and a mob of crazy social insects

attracted by the magnetic field

in your router or you cable box

get electrocuted and short circuit

your set up. No tv or internet.

No air conditioning. If they

got into your home circuits

and the refrigerator shut off,

no ice tea and your Bud Light

would be warm. 

What would the consequences be,

if these socialistic invaders seeking sweets

commandeered millions of cell phones!

cut off all the tweets from reaching

a swath from Tulsa to Pensacola?
Marched on Sherman's path
from Atlanta to Savannah?

Might have to build a wall.

Round them up

and put them in Ant Farms.

And make Brazil and Argentina

pay for it. I, for one, plan to boycott

the tango and and the samba.