Creatures Great and Small

Creatures Great and Small

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Though not the least bit dangerous, Argentine Ants win the grand prize for pesky, irritating, prolific and impossible to be squashed with any permanence. You in the North Country don’t have to worry about them. So far they have learned to inhabit only tropical and sub-tropical climes. I say ‘so far’. 

Adaptable little creatures they are.

They neither bite with fire nor leave welts. They don’t strip entire trees overnight. They don’t chew the furniture.

However, one this moment is traveling along the bottom rim of my reading glasses, left to right, cross over the nose piece, left to right along the other rim, about face and right to left, back again. Cheeky little bugger.  

Argentine Ants are year round, ever-present, and occupy my house. May is our hottest month, smack in the dry season. Argentine Ants particularly like to hang out in the kitchen, on the counters, in the sink, in search of moisture. If, however, I miss wiping a bread crumb off the counter, ants will call in a moving crew and will make short work of it.

I’m vigilant. I scrub assiduously. I keep a spray bottle of vinegar on the counter. Ha! Drops them in their tracks. Despite my efforts, I’ve eaten some, swallowed ants in glasses of water. Small, tasteless, harmless. I try not to think about it.

One of my friends asked me if I thought animals were bolder, now that people are not moving around so much. You know—people off the streets and animals reclaim territory. She recently had spotted a fox and a coyote in her yard.

My theory, and I can roust up a theory for any occasion, is that animals aren’t behaving differently, people are. People in place are not rushing about, focused on getting hither and yon. Consequently, people are noticing critters that are always there. It’s all about focus.

Two days ago I had a lizard in the house, crawling up my screen door. He was a little guy, about seven inches, nose to tail. Lizards are insect eaters, love those flies and mosquitoes and smaller bugs. So I like lizards.

But this guy is not a house lizard, not a gecko, so I escorted him out to the patio. He might have been fine inside, companionable, but I did not enjoy contemplating the possibility he might creep across my face in the night in search of one of those small gray flies or an errant Argentine Ant.

Yesterday I went to the patio to grab my mop. I always flip the mop-head about a bit in case a scorpion has crawled into the long cotton fibers. Out popped a fat pregnant mouse. She’d made a lovely nest in just two days. A shame to disturb her. But along with lizards, I don’t want mice living in my home. I’m not that lonely yet.

Today, while walking along in the shade of the jacaranda trees, thinking about a friend’s grievous situation, I had a clear picture of my Dad, with the saddest expression on his face.

Dad’s been gone several years. We have better communication now. He seems to know when I need a visit.

Dad reminded me of a time when I lived in Great Falls. We’d motored out to Wolf Creek Canyon for a family picnic. This was back in the mid-‘70s when I made the most disastrous decision of my life. 

Dad knew he could say no words to help me; he knew that I had to figure it out and save myself.

I had snapped a photo of my Dad and that picture reminds me as nothing else can, of the depth of his love for me. “Ah, Dad, I understand now,” I told him.

Resident animals are a great distraction, enabling me to avoid talking about a difficult situation. 

Somebody close to me, one whom I love, is about to make, or has made, a disastrous decision, guaranteed to bring years of pain.

There is nothing I can do, nothing I can say. I know you know what I mean. It hurts. We all have someone close to us and, helpless to intervene, we have had to watch him/her walk off a cliff. All we can do is love them and hope to help pick up the pieces.

So I distract myself with ants smaller than ground pepper, lizards and mice.

And crows. I seldom see crows in this neck of the woods. Grackles, yes, small blackbirds, yes. 

Crows, no. Look at those two clowns. In inimitable style, remind me of Heckle and Jeckle, the cartoon magpies, swinging through the branches like acrobats, making me laugh. It helps.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

May 7, 2020

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ants In My Pants and Other Observations

Ants In My Pants and Other Observations

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            Ants, those little buggers, are a constant, year-round plague.

Mosquitoes don’t irritate me nearly as much.  I don’t disdain the power of the mosquito, dastardly carrier of dread diseases, to wreak havoc on people and animals. But after surviving years of Milk River Valley mosquitoes, this inferior breed is a mere inconvenience. Okay, the truth is, I seldom see any.

Ants are another beast entirely. A nearly invisible fawn-colored ant likes my house, especially the kitchen and bathroom counters. I can, with diligence, keep them under control. However, I don’t use a sugar bowl or honey pot. I keep sugar and honey and most comestibles in containers with screw-tight lids. I quickly learned that necessity.

A larger rusty-colored ant which makes its presence known by creating mounds of grainy dirt also has the capability to eat bushes down to bare stems overnight. Just last week they ate every leaf and bounteous flower from my five-dead trees.

I shall always call them my five-dead trees because all winter I insisted they were dead and wanted to replace them. David from Centro Vivero insisted they were dormant. He won. They are quite alive, gifting me with months of beautiful flowers, purple and pink and white. New growth will appear soon but it is a shock to have leaves and flowers one day and naked stalks in the morning. They also munched half the leaves from my orange tree, newly planted last fall.

Another ant, huge and dark red-brown, meanders by my feet occasionally, but I find only one or two at a time. Smash.

I lose my Zen compassion for creatures when I see an ant. I become Super Woman with four kinds of ant killer in hand. Ants are my kryptonite.

The other day I spotted a line of black ants, a thousand-thousand all in a row, marching across my patio. I shucked my glasses and donned my cape and made ready to do battle when Leo, my garden helper, stopped me. “Those kind ants move from place to place. They no eat plants,” he said. I saw they each held a bundle on their back, like people fleeing a war-torn country. So what do they eat?

I let them live but it wasn’t easy for me. Sure enough, a couple hours later, the marchers were out of sight.

If I grew up in a different culture, I might look upon the lowly ant quite differently. I might hover over a mounded housing, waiting for the opportunity to scoop out a handful of the delicious little buggers. Chomp, chew, swallow. Mmmm, good.

It’s all a matter of perception, right?

Like this: It is mango season. Mangoes are my favorite fruit. Okay, my favorite fruit is whatever is in season. So today it’s mango. I have a friend who refuses to eat mangoes, doesn’t like mango, but feasts on my mango jam. Go figure. Perception.

Another friend won’t eat anything slimy. A few weeks ago I bought jaca fruit. It’s even juicier, more flavorful than mango. She said, “Eww, it’s slimy.” It’s no slimier than peach or kiwi or mango. Thinking about jaca makes my mouth water. It’s the best.

But, if we must consider slime, I am quite fond of okra. Not to mention oysters, raw on the half shell with lime and chili sauce.

I’ve learned to appreciate other fruits and vegetables in Mexico that I had never heard of or seen in my northern life.  Like pitaya and tuna, the cactus fruit. Or nopalitos, the pulpy pads of the prickly pear.

Mexican friends tell me the iguana is tasty—not the little brand of garden iguana I have in my yard, but the larger variety on the coast. They tell me it tastes like chicken. People say the same thing about snakes. Chickens taste like chickens. Snakes taste like snakes. Iguanas taste like iguanas.

If iguana, chopped and sautéed in butter with garlic and chilies, were presented to me on a tortilla, would I eat it? Maybe. It’s logical. I ate menudo tacos. I ate brain tacos. Liver taco is quite tasty. Therefore, I’d probably try an iguana taco.

I draw the line at ants. Not on a tortilla. Not in chocolate. Not in ice cream.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 27, 2017

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________