Elspeth the Ant

Other people have cats, dogs and budgerigars. My pet is somewhat smaller.

It is an ant.

Just one.

Of course, I cannot be too sure that it is the same one; I’m not sure how long they live. Tiny creatures tend to have short lives. I know that some types of ant queens can live for many years—perhaps thirty years, but the workers have much shorter existences.

But not tiny lives. To them their life must be as big as our lives are to us.

I wonder if, when they get to be really old, maybe four or five weeks, they think, “It must be nearly time to retire, to put all my feet up.”

They can move really quickly, too. They have such spindly little legs that flash along without ever seeming to trip over anything.

My ant does tricks. When I blow on her she either freezes or suddenly runs around in a frenzy. I think she is playing dead or trying to throw some unseen predator off the scent.

Elspeth (the ant) never attacks me. She is well disciplined. She will come and inspect my feet but never climbs onto my leg. Perhaps my feet are not the right scent for her.

I sometimes wonder if they have a sense of humour. It is unlikely; they seem to be so busy all the time running aimlessly around.

When I watch Elspeth going about her duties I can see no end product. She comes to the same place and inspects it every day knowing that there will be nothing there.

I believe she is skiving off from her work. Elspeth, I am certain, is a shrewd ant. She rushes around pretending to be busy but, in actual fact, she is just having a laugh on her colleagues.

I bet all her co-workers are carrying ever-heavy loads of grub for the grubs while she comes and checks out my feet, giggles and then goes back to the Queen to tell her that she has worked really, really hard but there was just nothing there worth bringing back.

Communicating with ants is difficult. They cannot, I am now pretty certain, read. I tried writing as small as I could but Elspeth ignored it. The pitch of my voice is very likely to be well below their threshold of hearing—if they have ears in the first place.

Snakes have no ears. Playing music for a snake is like throwing snowballs in the fire.

Maybe ants are the same. No ears.

Tonight was a bit of a breakthrough occasion. Elspeth brought a friend.

Possibly Elspeth is about to retire and so brought along someone to show her how to avoid working.

I hope it is only a retirement. I can’t think of the worst that could happen to her.

My fear is that she will perish before her time. People don’t watch where they put their feet. She could be murdered. Or manslaughtered. Antslaughtered?

Is killing an ant regarded as anticide or ant-acid?

I am prepared for the inevitable. There is bound to come a time when Elspeth will not show up and the truth will dawn. She has passed away. Gone to that great ant’s nest in the sky where her and her colleague’s tiny souls will rest from their interminable labours in peace.

It might be that they will sit on comfortable cushions and sip nectar through a tiny straw while basking in the light of a miniature sun.

A just reward for a brief lifetime spent, in Elspeth’s case, avoiding labour.

Tiny lives and big lives. Ants and elephants with us somewhere in the middle.

All biological machines. We look different and we behave differently but we all have lives to live and our own way of doing it.

We are described as being ‘self aware’. Are elephants? Insects? How can we tell if they are?

How do we know what an ant feels when it sees a huge giant’s foot heading down towards it? Does it panic? Does it feel pain as the life is gradually squeezed out of it?

I worry about Elspeth. I don’t worry about the neighbour’s filthy cat. But I do worry about my Elspeth.