By coincidence, 42,000 little red ants and I arrived at the lake to go sunbathing at the same time – me in my car with my sunglasses and shorts and they, I presume, in their little red ant bus.
We all walked down the hill to the water’s edge – each of them took 5,000 steps to every one of mine – and we arrived at our destination more or less together. They watched patiently as I spread my big beach blanket on the ground and having forgotten to bring theirs, as soon as I stretched out they all ran onto mine.
And onto me.
I love tiny red ants running all over my body and I think it’s cute the way they bite into my skin like I was a big cob of buttered sweet corn, but I have a peevish streak in me I can’t explain so I spent the next two hours launching ants into orbit by flicking them like mini-crokinole buttons.
They thought I was just playing a game so as soon as they hit the ground they headed straight for the blanket again. They liked that game better than the thumping running shoe one, however, from which they did not recover as quickly as from the flying fore-fingernail.
To prevent this activity from becoming boring by the sheer repetition of it, I sat up, stretched a blade of grass to the proper tightness between my thumbs and putting my mouth up to the makeshift whistle, blew several “phleet, phleet” sounds across the waters and banks of the lake.
Before long, some other fun-loving, ant-covered sunbather “phleeted” back through the reed between his thumbs and within minutes, there was a chorus.
My mournful “phleets” were answered by the various occupants of towels spread here and there across the lake banks and we all soon sounded like a bunch of lovesick, ring-necked blade phleeters who couldn’t quite find each other.
A hundred seagulls, however, had no trouble following the original phleeting sound, the call which had emanated from my thumbs first, and eventually, they left the lake’s surface and hovered and circled above me and the ants like vultures over a carcass in the desert.
I sat in wait for the worst sensation in life – the feeling of something wet on your head when you’re outside and it isn’t raining.
Ignoring, as best I could, the industrious ants which were busy mapping out roadways on my blanket and my back, and the lovemad seagulls which were circling in ever lower circles above me, I lay back to suntan, which had been the original purpose of my visit to the lake.
And as I lay there roasting in the late afternoon sun, I took out the book I had brought along. For an hour, I read this short paragraph over and over: “For once in his life, Carlos knew he was truly alone. He could see, at last that only he was left to slay the dragons in his path – that he could expect no help, nor even, encouragement. It was a lonely, chilling moment, but a liberating one, too.”
The average reader might have wanted to find out how Carlos made out with the dragons and I probably did too but try as I might, I couldn’t get past that paragraph. I would read it, then look up to flick a dozen ants and shoo a dozen gulls away and when I’d finally turn back to the page, I’d start over at the beginning of the same paragraph.
I did, however, get pretty good at reading it and can quote it to this day.
As the sun finally started to set, I prepared for home. I had to first evict the hordes of ants which were turning my old running shoes into ant condos and shake dozens of their relatives and friends from my blanket.
Sundbathing’s for the birds. And the ants.
Not for human beings.
©1988 Jim Hagarty
