To Ant, or Not to Ant

On the last day of the year, in a used bookstore we visit every so often in West Salem, I chanced upon an unread copy of a Library of America edition containing three works by Herman Melville, all having to do with the sea: Typee; Omoo; and Mardi. Priced at only eight dollars and fifty cents, the book was still in its original white slipcase, and its ribbon marker had never been moved. Of course I brought it home, and I’ve read four chapters thus far of Typee.

On the first day of the year, I cleaned the floor, and in the process vacuumed up some ants. I would much rather not vacuum up ants. But when your house is built on an ant hill, it seems inevitable. Still, I entertain the idea of someday living in a house that is ant-free, instead of in a house where the ants are free. For now, I’m glad they stay outside during the warmer months. Heating the house — maybe that’s our mistake? In the meantime, these tiny creatures never find any food. We’re quite neat in the kitchen, and don’t wander around with our meals. I’ve thought that perhaps if I let them understand they’re truly welcome — in other words, if I don’t resist their presence at all, and in fact make a benevolent study of them and every evening read them my findings and invite their comments and corrections, they might somehow be content in living entirely beneath the house. The key would be my total surrender; ants are more than efficient, they’re wise; I’m sure they’d be sensitive to any doubt.

I suppose this sounds rather ridiculous. But when you come right down to it, aren’t the ants and I just different combinations of the same elements, making our way through eternity in the forms we’ve been granted? It’s preposterous to think of ourselves as enemies. I don’t know. Maybe if I sing to them — dancing being dangerous, depending on where I step. And what if, even now, they’re singing to me, and are puzzled that I never seem to hear them. Do they think I’m rude?

I really didn’t mean to write so much about ants. E.O. Wilson, the great biologist and entomologist, wrote eloquently about ants; his writing, too, is included in the Library of America. And he wrote about them meaningfully and intelligently, based on a lifetime of study, without once mentioning the idea of singing to them. Yet maybe he did, and his editor didn’t see fit to include it.

I have no editor — something you would never have guessed.

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