I've started a job at Second Cup for a few weeks now. It's min wage and I am subservient to everyone when I wear that uniform but it's satisfying in that I'm making money and I feel like I can use my free time to do what I want. For example:
I adopted an ant. My initial intention was to catch, cook and eat some because I wanted to explore the possibility of ants being a viable source of protein for our new green world. I read on the Always Credible and Magnificent Internet that they are delicious, full of protein and much more environmentally viable than meat. Probably more humane too.
So yeah, maybe that sounds weird but maybe not if you think about it for a while. Something else I realized after thinking about it for awhile:
Taking care of the little ant was a little bit like taking care of the baby. There are mental if not physical changes that result from being held responsible for something, for an ant just as to a baby. It's like responsibility is a chemical emotion just like happiness is tied endorphins and fear with adrenaline. I can feel responsibility in my core; a mix of pride and prudence, energising, producing an attitude that is mindful of danger, the future, consequences and security. I find myself taking bigger breaths, expanding lungs and shoulders with a little more purpose as priorities re-categorize. When you are depended on, you think of how best to be strong and to protect.
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So anyway, with this ant, I brought her (worker ants are female I just found out and had to change "he" and "him" to "she" and "her" a million times) home in a tupperware with some leaves. I only found one ant, after spending 2 hours biking around Mount Royal, lifting logs and leaves and digging in the dirt. I even put out some apples but to no avail. Maybe the cold weather had them hiding. She was the only one out, and she was a big fatty, healthy, thick and black. A formidable ant if ever there was one.
I put a maple brown sugar cereal thing in her box and softened it up with some water thinking it'd be gourmet. Every day while I went to work and class, the little missus would stay in her box until I came home to let her out to play. She'd climb everything and I'd watch and marvel at her tiny-ness. If you think hard about anything, it eventually becomes mind-bogglingly amazing as questions overwhelm.
How such a tiny body can be capable of decisions? She's so small and she's choosing her trajectory, but where is the decision-center for these decisions? Where is she storing information about where she went and how does she know not to re-trace her path? What would she do if there was another ant? She probably has never been in a house before. This could be the moon. What does she think my laptop is? Where is she getting all this energy? She definitely doesn't realize who or what I am but what does she realize? What does she make of the fact that forces keep putting her back in a plastic tupperware despite all her efforts?
I took a bunch of pictures and cross-referenced with that peer-reviewed and infallible online academic journal, The Internet. Found out she's a carpenter ant, that they have "elbow jointed antennas" and that all 6 legs are attached to their thorax and that they don't breathe but have little holes where air passes through, like air gills. And you can see their eyes if you look closely, which are capable of seeing light and movement but nothing too detailed since they rely mainly on the antennas. Check out the mandibles and her overall hairyness.
After a few days, everytime I opened the tupperware after class, a stench of rotting sugar burst out. The maple sugar thing wasn't looking so appetitizing anymore. I took it out, changed her water and let her out to play but she had lost a step. She definitely looked skinnier and though she would still explore, after a while she would just sit and vibrate her legs. I knew that this wasn't going to end well. I felt a little guilty and I could have probably let her go.
5 or 6 days after our first introduction, I came home from class to find her dead. Don't know what exactly caused her death her but it was definitely my fault. I felt a tiny pang of emotion as I lifted her body out of her plastic cage. Had her last few hours been lonely? Painful? I don't know. I thought about it for a second but even after all that schpiel about responsibility, she's still just an ant in my mind. Too small, too un-human, too insignificant, too easily forgettable. A little cold-hearted maybe?
So I ate her as per my initial intention and concluded that eating one raw ant is not a great way to get your nutrition. The taste wasn't bad and there was some texture but there was an unpleasant tingling on my tongue afterward, perhaps from the hairs on her body or the sting of betrayal. Maybe cooked would be better.
