The ordeal of the ants
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Wala langThis morning, I found a dead cockroach in one of the studios and saw that ants have started converging around it. In a few minutes, the dead cockroach have started moving - very slowly - being carried off by the ants to their den in our computer room.
It was a slow but visible painstaking process, especially when the ants reached the studio’s doorway out into the livingroom. The floor of the living room was slightly raised, maybe about a centimeter over the floor of the studio.
There were ants pushing and there were ants pulling and there were ants tugging at the dead cockroach’s antennae (I call them “whiskers”). There were plenty of on-looker ants too, moving about, and some were just still, alone, others in pairs, sometimes in threes and at most in fours.
Trevor and I finished lunch and the ants hadn’t managed to lift the dead cockroach out into the livingroom. They were turning the thing around, deciding whether to lift it by the head thru pulling its whiskers or to lift it by its bum, or by its side.
I asked Trevor if God should give them a hand. Trevor said no and that we should stick to the Star Trek Enterprise principle of no intervention. I said, well I’m sure they’ll figure something out, and when they do we’ll hear a loud applause.
While Trevor was washing the dishes, I saw it happen - the ants lifting the cockroach by the bum and carrying it through the doorway and out into the livingroom. I couldn’t help but cheer. 
In a few minutes they crossed the livingroom and were on their way towards the computer room. Getting through the doorway was easier because the floor of the computer room was lower, and so the ants just had to push the cockroach down.
Soon they were crossing the room, passing under my chair and heading for the hole in the wall behind the boxes where Trevor had stocked away many of his books from Amsterdam.
But there was another obstacle - the thick cord of the electric fan.
Just as with the studio doorway, the ants tried lifting the cockroach over the cord, turning it around many times, trying by the bum, by the head and by the side. I thought, oh they should know better by now that lifting the dead cockroach by the bum is easier. But what made things more difficult was that the ants pulling the cockroach by the whiskers have insisted on pulling it through under the cord. What was worse was that they kept on doing that against the other ants pulling and lifting the cockroach by the bum.
It was turning into a futile tug-o-war.
I asked again if God should interfere and Trevor said no. I thought, well, I’m sure these smart ants will sort something out by themselves.
Minutes and then an hour passed and the ants have visibly become exhausted. There were less of them now and many that previously swarmed around have stopped moving. There were so much more “on-lookers” now.
Suddenly, someone rang. It was our cleaning lady. She comes twice a month to do a general clean-up of the apartment. Trevor and I greeted her and then she started cleaning up in the studio. I thought that at least the computer room would be the last room to get cleaned so the ants would have time to sort out their cockroach problem.
When I came back to the computer room to see how they were doing I was shocked to see that they have managed to cross the cockroach over the cord. I quickly called Trevor and asked him if he saw how they did it.
Trevor admitted that he lifted the cord to let the ants through.
I was disappointed, of course, that God interfered.
Trevor reasoned that he had to do something before the cleaning lady gets to them.
Strangely enough, a few minutes later, I noticed that the ants were in the same place a few inches past the cord. They haven’t moved forward at all but have been turning and turning that dead cockroach around and around and around.
I told Trevor, look what you’ve done! What a disaster! 
They were doing fine, I said, until they discovered “religion”! 
It must’ve been nearly an hour that the ants moved that dead cockroach round and round in the same place. They really got screwed up.
However, they did finally manage to snap out of their cockroach carousel impression. By the time the cleaning lady started doing the computer room, the ants and their dinner were all safely hidden away in their den.
It will probably rain again soon, I thought, which was why the ants have been so busy … In the meantime, I finally finished a rejoinder to the piece I wrote about IPR and intellectual imperialism, thru Korakora Proyekto.
