In my recent collection, The Drowned Life, I have a story, if you could call it that, "A Few Things About Ants."  It's a compilation of tales about my personal interactions with ants through the years.  When it was finally published I figured that would take care of the ant angle pretty solidly.  But just within the last few days, they've burrowed their way back into my consciousness.  On the drive home from work on Thursday, on late night AM radio, I heard a report about the discovery of a new ant species in the heart of the Amazon jungle.  Martialis Heureka  is its scientific name, but it's nickname is Ant From Mars. These ants are pale, eyeless, subterranean and predatory. They have been around for 120 million years and are at the root of ant evolution.

OK, so there was that little bit of ant news that held my imagination for a moment and then dropped into the darkness. I didn't think anything of it until Sunday morning when we were having breakfast at the Uncertain Diner and Madame Cesura was telling Lynn and I about when she lived on a farm in Delaware with a one eyed mongrel named Cyclops. She tried to block her memory of him killing chickens but she recalled that her father was a part time magician known as The Magus. Anyway, she tells Lynn and I, while we're finishing our coffee, that once when she was a kid, her house was infested with ants. There was a drought or something and the ants were coming inside, walking through rooms on the wooden floors in single file. She knew the ants would be exterminated, so one afternoon when she saw the Queen ant, the biggest ant, heading for the kitchen, she blocked its way and began speaking to it. The child Madame explained to the insect why the ants must leave the house and go back to their nests. "Oh, jeez," said Lynn and we all laughed. "I swear," said the Madame. "It moved its antennas." Here, she put her arms up strait next to her ears and waved them slightly backward and forward. "Like this. I could tell she was listening." 

"The Vulcan mind meld," I said. Lynn shook her head. "Wait," said the Madame. "I convinced them to turn around and go back to the nest. They started to  shift gears. It worked, just by talking. I know they understood. Then, later that day, my aunt took it upon herself to pour two gallons of boiling water into the hole of the ant mound outside the back door. I'd led them to their deaths," she said and squinted for a moment with remorse.

I told the Madame that only a month or so earlier I'd seen this show on Nova on the tube called Master of the Killer Ants. It's about the Mofu people of Mali. When their village homes get infested with termites, which they know will eat all of the grain they've stored, an old fellow named Matsgrawai seeks out a colony of the killer ants known as Jaglavak, prince of insects. The pincer jaws of this species are so powerful that human wounds are stapled closed with them. The old guy prays and pleads with them to come and prey on the termites. His prayers this time go unanswered, so he sends the children of the village to plead with the ants and they do. And then the ants come like a river, streaming toward the village where they infest every house, eat all the termites and then stream back to their nests.