After killing a spider
how lonely I feel,
in the cold of night.
Basho
Yesterday evening as I stepped out into the back yard to water the few surviving there flowers, I noticed the frantic ant activity around the openings between the stone plates covering the area adjacent to the house. (This is where I occasionally enjoy a cup of freshly brewed green tea shortly after the sun is up, when the neighbourhood is quiet, with the exception of the twittering birds hiding in the bloom of the apple trees). The openings were created as a result of my cleaning activity earlier in the morning when I had pulled out the patches of grass that gave the place the wild and untidy look. In fact, I was quite pleased with myself for finally doing it.
Leaning over one of the holes I noticed that the ants were actually engaged in a cleaning mission of their own each of them coming out of the hole with a grain of sand sometimes half their body size. I guessed that by pulling out the weeds I singlehandedly distroyed the complecated structure of their underground tunnels. The soil then collapsed onto whatever was remaning underneath and now they were taking out the stones arranging them on the side of the opening into a shapeless pyramid. Needless to say I felt ashamed that I hadn’t thought about the devastating consequences my cleaning actions would result in for my underground neighbours before getting all enthusiastic about pulling out those weeds. Of course I knew the ants had their tiny colonies all around the place under the tiny hills of sand here and there. I just didn’t think far enough to come to a different solution. We never had any conflicts before and my consciousness was not quite clear as I got up to my feet to return to my warm and well lit home, leaving the tiny workers to their hard labour, possibly all night through.
