ANTS

I have an ant problem that started in the bathroom.  Small black ants that suddenly seemed to be everywhere—scurrying over the floor, swarming the counter by the sink, and beginning to extend their explorations into my adjacent bedroom.  Entering from their nest in the wall where the pipe comes out for the toilet.  

So I set out bait—sugar water with boric acid bought from Longs—one on the ledge of the shower stall that was close to their portal of entry and one on the sink counter where they were even getting into my water pic reservoir.  Scouting ants found both baits within an hour, and soon there was one stream of ants going from pipe entry directly to the shower stall bait and another separate long line going along the edge of shower ledge, climbing up the edge of the sink counter, and across to that bait; guided by the chemical (pheromones) trails that the scout ants had laid down from bait back to nest.  The lines kept seperate; there were no ants that changed from one line to the other and they moved with assuredness, pausing just to touch antennae wtih ants traveling in the other direction, reinforcing that this was the right path.  This went on for days as I refilled the bait stations again and again.  

As I had hoped, the boric acid began to take its toll, and the number of ants on both trails decreased,  but the remaining ants continued to keep to their separate ways.  I noticed that now some of the ants did not return directly from bait to nest, but seemed to wander aimlessly and even stop for some time before moving again, acting as if they had lost the trail.  Perhaps their antennae, that are the sensory organs for following the chemical signs, were not functioning well because of the poison.  Finally they stopped showing up for either bait.  At last I thought.

I left the baits in place just in case.  Good thing.  After a pause of three or four days, the ants showed up again, and again went to both baits.  But this time while some ants traveled from nest to shower bait and returned to nest, others continued on to the sink counter bait, returning along the same trail to the shower bait before going back to the nest.  Now one trail served both baits.  It appeared that the pheromone for the earlier separate sink counter trail had been lost.  Still, a few ants seemd to retain a “memory” or “programming” for the old trail since they would circle about after leaving the shower bait as if searching for the lost trail, before giving up and returning to the present trail.  After some days, the number of ants going on to the sink counter decreased and now just a very few follow what must have become a very weak scent.  Most ants are busy with just the one shower bait.  (And hopefully will be poisoned and disappear.) 

Nature is wonderful.  That ants with such tiny brains can find food, lay down trails so that other colony members can follow it exactly without deviating, and seemingly search for a lost trail from the past as if they retained some memory of it.  And all with a brain one millionth the size of a human’s.  Of course they must do it by instinct, right?  Can’t be really “thinking” or “remembering” like we do? Humans with our big brains can do so much more than ants.  We can imagine, create, reason, remember.  We have emotions.  We can use logic to guide our life choices.  Not just blindly following a trail of pheromones.

And yet.  I had a friend from Texas who said that his father once told him to always vote Democratic even if they ran a mule for president. (Way back before Texas became a red state.)  I began smoking cigarettes in college because it was the cool thing to do since everyone else was doing it even though the first times I really didn’t enjoy it, until I became addicted and then had to continue till I finally was able to stop.  (That’s another story.)  We have emotions that can both reinforce and distort our “logical” decisions, unlike Mr. Spock.  Just listen to some Country-Western music.  And there are too many examples from politics, society, and religion—I’m sure you can think of some, present and past—that show that humans will easily follow a trail of mind pheromones, suspending reason for belief and, once on the path, not deviate no matter what countering facts or arguments are offered.  I would not want a life devoid of emotions where the highs can be so wonderful even if the lows can be so very dark.  Not everyone might agree.  Emotions are a gift of our big brains.  So are reasoning and logic.  Yet we are so susceptible to mind pheromones that, when encountered and if accepted, we will follow without questioning just as the ants do their chemical trails.  Come on people—our brains are one million times larger than those of ants.  Will we ever begin to use ours more?