The Ant Colony

When I was young, I used to play with ants. And not in the sense that most children would; no, I was fascinated by them. Such a vast population, all working together to create their monuments, those towering walls to protect them from the evils outside, and when some alien creature attempts to intrude, they act as one body to defend their home, dismember it and share the spoils in victory, and the dead receive the highest honor --- to be piled among the pantheon of stones that surround their fortress, to serve as guardians until the earth carries them away.
     I found this population far more interesting than those around me, seemingly going about life with no purpose. The only memories I have of the daycare ladies was of their authority, and of their shapeless form that reminds me of janitors, aging barbers, and similar saints of society. And the children of the daycare...few of us had anything in common. I couldn't understand their hollow view of the world, their gullibility of anything they have been told, as long as it's detrimental to their imaginations. Only a few of them took interest in me, and that was probably because I was so strange.
     The reason for bringing up my daycare, Happy Day, as it was called, is that it was a place of profound learning for me. I learned so much of man's potential, and everything of it's waste. There was this particular colony of ants that fascinated me. Their numbers were so great, their walls so high, I felt that they were impenetrable. I chose this colony as my own, a family if you will. I would bring them leftovers from snack time, food from home, live worms, all just to watch them as they examined my offering, slowly amassing an army to disassemble it and take it down into their mysterious crypts of treasuries and winter storages.
     It was amazing what my little family was capable of. We were unstoppable, the world be damned. I would feed them live insects, and like Spartans they would overtake their rival and drag the carcass in pieces down to their queen and their temples, undoubtedly placing the heads over fireplaces in tavern halls where they would drink from aphids until they could not walk straight even on six legs. In the meantime I would leave them and discover the world. The backyard of the daycare was a breeding ground for caterpillars. I would never sacrifice these to my brethren, as they were too beautiful, too innocent to harm. I would cover myself in these furry creatures, allow them to explore me as I explored them, and then release them back unto the trees from whence they came. Every once in a while I would come across a grey caterpillar. This would always intrigue me, as if I'd just found a scientific anomaly. Oh, what magic this creature must possess! I would call to my friends, and usually a straggler would join us and disgustedly say, "Eww, a grey caterpillar! Those are poisonous, you know." And I would regard them as being misinformed, delusional. How can one go through life in fear of all that is unique, all that is strange?
     Nobody could understand my fascination with ants. They would say, "They're just ants," but I would say, "Isn't anything 'just' what it is?" You could say that you're 'just a human', and this is true. Alas, the beauty is in what we perceive. Our shallow view of reality, our strangling ties with society, have caused us to overlook everything beyond humanity. I saw this in children, children, as early as second and third grade. I always thought to myself, "There has to be more people that think like I do. Most kids think I'm weird, grown-ups think I'm 'special' or 'really smart' and all...but there has to be someone who simply sees the world like I do." But my enlightenment was yet to come.
     It was a fine day to visit my ants. They had been busy at work that day on a cheese puff, pastry or something of that nature that I had given them, and I had been watching them alone for a good fifteen minutes while the other children were off playing tag, on the swing sets, and whatever else they did. I was fully tuned into my ants; they were my universe that afternoon. Up and down and around the cracks in the sidewalk they worked furiously to dismember this new gift from the incomprehensible titan god above them. Within my tribute were catacombs, ants walking through tunnels of pure sustenance, and they had this wealth all because of me; I felt proud. Then along came a challenger to the throne.
     "What are you doing?" He had asked, in that confused but not really curious, almost condescending tone you get from children who fancy themselves the alpha male of the litter.
     "I'm watching ants," I had said innocently and proudly. "I've took care of them for a long time. There's a whole lot of them. Look at that food, they're all over it! Isn't it cool?"
     He at first didn't say anything. I looked up at him, and he had a look, almost a grimace, that matched his condescending tone before. Everything seemed to sink into a shade of black around me, I became territorial. Something told me this would not end well.
     I must have said something along the lines of "are you going to watch?" or anything at all to perhaps distract him from his mindless thoughts.
     He replied, "That's weird. They're just ants."
     "So?"
     "Just gross, stupid ants. Why don't you kill them?"
     "Why would I want to do that?"
     And he raised his foot. My heart stopped, but I was powerless. There was nothing I could do to stop this genocide, as in my realm I already knew how it would look. His murder would be trivial to my pushing him to the asphalt and showing him just how it felt to be stepped on.
     The foot fell. I heard the crunch of my offering, could sense the chaos beneath. He raised his foot and dropped it again, and again. My brethren were in a complete state of shock, not knowing whether to run or fight; they could not even comprehend their opponent. All they knew was a great, dark force falling from the sky, the wind bellowing above them, and then darkness. It could be me, it could be my own foot of wrath coming down to slay them, pointlessly, for amusement. How could they know the difference? This was the way of my people. To destroy, to look forwards, but never up. To lash out, but never look inward. To stomp our boots over entire civilizations, knowing nobody will lift a finger to stop us. That was the humanity that I saw that day, under the melancholy sun, upon the ancient, weathering asphalt, hundreds of my kin dead beneath a Trojan Horse of my own design, grey caterpillars crawling up an ageless tree somewhere in the distance, innocent, misunderstood, and children laughed on, on, on in the background.
     The boy smiled at me. He was proud. Laughed, even. Then he was gone. I was left there to ponder what went wrong, what in all of God's creation went wrong.
     I really did abandon my ant colony that day. They were great in numbers, and perhaps it was time that they built a society on their own. They were doing fine without me, and in the end I had only brought them suffering. I adopted a new colony, several, actually, one at home, another at my father's house. One eventually died out; they stopped accepting my offerings when their vaults were full, so I began to only bring live creatures. Apparently my gifts were too challenging for them, and they lost so many numbers that they could no longer support the queen. I'm sure the queen died of natural causes, but I've always felt a bit of guilt. The second major colony resided in a rotten log, which my brother rolled down a hill, and the rain took care of what was left of those poor souls. After that, I decided that what they needed was not a god; they were completely sufficient without the minds of men, without the help of the divine. I left them to their own devices and found new hobbies.
     My account of all this may sound trivial if you remove all the prose, but if you were in my shoes, such things meant the world to me. I can only hope that that boy will not be leading our country one day. I don't want humanity to end up like my ant colony.