By the second day of our trip, I still hadn't gotten completely used to every tickle on my body being an ant or a spider. I would usually hope that it was the former, and it usually was. The ants were so large, that you could almost feel each individual step on your skin.
I would be lying on a warm rock by the lake, and feel something slowly moving up my arm. Rather then slap at it, I would usually sit up and blow the ant off. He would fly off my arm, onto a rock nearby and continue crawling along, unfazed.
At one point I reached for my water bottle, and there was a large ant crawling up the side. I shook the bottle, but he gripped tight and didn't budge. So I hit the bottle against a rock a couple times to try to shake him off. In my clumsy attempt, I hit his little ant body on the rock. He fell from the bottle, staggered a bit and then stopped moving.
I sat for a moment, feeling oddly remorseful, as I stared at his motionless curled body. I'd never in my life felt so sorry for killing an ant.
I spray at them mercilessly at home, wiping them off my counters, thinking "not in my house."
But this wasn't my house. This was his house. I felt as silly as I did remorseful, as I used a leaf to pick his little body up, and put him into the lake, where he floated away.
For what it's worth: I'd never in my life felt so sorry reading about the killing of an ant. But maybe he (she) wasn't killed: maybe she was just knocked unconscious. Imagine her delight waking up and finding she's on a summer lake cruise. One minute, she's hard at work for the Colony, the next she's in her own private Cote d'Azur. Well done, then.
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