l wake up one morning and the ants have arrived.
They are in my bedroom: columns of them, menacingly small.Why are they
here? Fast and dark and busy, hot in pursuit of their career. Bustling
their way up the ant ladder. Don't they know they're in the wrong place?
No: they've found a supply of minute crumbs deep in the bowels of the
carpet and are now hard at work on highway construction. Thousands of them.
So intense, so focused they don't even notice I'm here. To them, I'm like
some large distant floating cloud, utterly irrelevant to the task at
hand.
I think: it's an insane world, and here's proof. I wake up from a dream,
planning to meditate -- and here's a primal annoyance crawling around under
my feet, oozing the confidence that only impossibly large groups can
possess.
They're hard at work; I'm planning murder. I buy ant hotels, glue traps,
spray: the works. My other plans have dropped into nowhere: this is a goal
that requires feverish attention. Using my superior human intellect, I
place the poisons wisely, and wait for them to take effect. In time,
several ants are slain, but this changes nothing. Thousands more jump in
line to take their place. Why are they doing this to me?
Oh! I get it -- it's another one of those stainless steel lessons the
universe is famous for. Am I ready to be illuminated? Yes.
These ants have come to be blessed, and here I am struggling against them,
calling them into battle against my giant spray cans and superior wit. But
these ants have come to be blessed. And so I walk into another room --
where there are no ants to inflame my fears-- and settle into the Calm
Place that lies hidden behind my uproars. When enough quiet has seeped in,
I bless the ants.
Then it comes to me: I remember a friend telling me that nature's finest
ant repellent is plain cinnamon. It seems a peaceful enough evacuation
device, so I act on it. I buy a large can of cinnamon and sprinkle some on
top of the ants' highway, and more on the ants' entrance tunnel. That's all
I do: sprinkle cinnamon on the ants and let them be.
In two days they are completely gone.
Back to the London Mall