It was very, very quiet on the hillside.
Juan del Llano sat in his backyard and wondered where everyone had gone. He stared at the birdless trees. What a strange summer this is, he thought, realizing there weren’t any insects either, except for the ants! Almost no butterflies or moths, no mosquitoes at all, not a single grasshopper, and hardly any flies. That was the strange thing. The national bird of New Mexico was without a doubt the genus Mosca. Not to see them represented wasn’t disappointing, but did make him feel less patriotic.
The ants, meanwhile, were everywhere. It hadn’t rained for months, which suited them just fine. They streamed in long caravans from seething mounds underneath the chamisa up the trunks of every elm. They harvested aphids on the sagebrush. One had to do a little dance while hanging laundry on the clothesline. There were always several in the bathtub needing flushing, and once he flicked one off his toothbrush. He could tell that they were hungry, though— they were even going after birdseed. (There wasn’t much left after nightly raccoon raids, but what there was, they wanted.) He would either have to grow a pair of mandibles or buy all the poison down at Wal-Mart. Instead, he decided to go on a picnic in the canyon by the Rio Grande.
There were no flies beside the gurgling banks. Not even any ants. With the exception of a dozen resident Canada geese, neither were there any birds, which he now attributed to fate. There was nothing one could do, just like during that horrendous summer of drought in Maryland, when the browning grass turned crispy stiff, and starving squirrels invaded from the forest to attack the English walnut trees—a month of walking barefoot on broken bits of shells that rained down from above.
But up and down the river, there was lots of life. No animals, but people, here and there. He saw a pair of fishermen who seemed totally content. A pale kid no more than 20 arrived on a fast motorcycle to set up camp. A dozen people partied on a little strip of beach beside a bridge. There were families staying in the shelters, a church group camping in a clump. Juan sat there chewing on his ham & cheese and scanned the cliffs for Indians. He felt like he was on the inside looking out, for once, instead of queuing for a spot.
His rented heart gave up a little shudder. In the coolness, he rejoiced.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The flies are starting to arrive now. I just noticed their increasing numbers yesterday, right before I read your post.
I guess the little bit of moisture we’ve gotten is enough to hatch a new crop! Ugh…
Good writing, my friend. Mellowness becomes you!
Ant society is pretty interesting, you know. If what you want out of yourself and your fellows is pure altruism (within the clan, of course – unrelenting warfare outside it), you could do worse than be an ant. The life of all us higher types is predicated on selfishness – surviving in our own unique entity and passing our own unique genes down the line. An ant community is just a great big commune which thrives on the selfless devotion of its workers and doesn’t care about their individual existences. Only the Queen has anything like a life – if you think a brief mating dance followed by immobility and egg-production counts as such.
Remember in West Texas those gigantic hills of “red” ants – the large biting ones? Kids in those days went barefoot during the summer, and those things were worthy enemies. I remember hours on end spent dive-bombing their fortifications with bricks and boulders, and even surreptitiously bringing in lighter fluid and cigarette lighters as heavy artillery. In the end the critters always outlasted and survived the onslaught. I reckon that’s a good description of the future of the planet.