Of Ants and Men

I’ve had an ongoing real and internal struggle with a red ant hill in my back yard. In general, I use no non-organic pesticides and generally understand that insects are beneficial for gardens. I try to cultivate a position of tolerance even if there is a part of myself that would prefer not to be bothered by them.

Red ants are in a different category for me that also includes earwigs, centipedes and roaches. There is something about these bugs that make them hard for me to coexist with. I would even be willing to let these red ants do their thing, but they have set up shop in a highly trafficked footpath and I know they will grow a huge mound if I don’t stop them.

So first I tried one kind of ant trap: no effect. Then a second type: no effect. Then diatomaceous earth sprinkled on their mount: very little and temporary effect. In fact, it almost felt to me that this benign, organic solution was a kind of torture for them: perhaps the equivalent of napalm for humans? It seemed like a cruel solution.

I finally had to break down and buy the Amdro powder everyone seems to use. Now I know why: they ate it up like candy and now I see no activity at the mound. Success? It achieved the end and seemed to do it quickly and hopefully reasonably humanely.

Success, of a kind. But I am also saddened at having to use my overwhelming power and physical superiority to crush them in this way. I have no illusions that nature is anything but red in tooth and claw, but I still maintain a hope that we as humans with the ability to consciously evolve are moving in a more humane direction (most environmental evidence to the contrary).

And my ability to choose those ants’ fate so decisively makes me nervous. I am sure the ants had little understanding of what was happening to them or why. I envision them developing stories about the Dark Times, or attempting to explain their fate in terms of a vengeful god or some other cosmic or religious explanation. (Please excuse my anthropomorphism.)

The point is, how can we be sure there are not large and powerful creatures, equivalently large when humans are compared with ants, who out of some passing fancy or whim decide to do the equivalent of sprinkle some Amdro on our mound? Our entire universe could be something like a raindrop in these being’s universe: totally inconsequential. Our time and space scales could be radically different and so we have little knowledge of each other. They may have no idea they are effecting us at all at the same time we are experiencing horrible catastrophe at their hand.

More than the pointlessness of a totally random universe, I fear that our suffering may be caused by nothing more than such a cosmic oversight!