Just a Little Thing
It was just a little thing. My peripheral vision picked up a slight movement and turning, I saw an ant crawling along my kitchen countertop. I wonder where you came from, I thought, and returned to my day. One little ant was of no concern, but a few hours later I noticed he brought some friends along. I slapped my hand in frustration on the counter, and then at least twenty ants scurried out from under the lip of the sink, running in circles and into each other.
Off I went to the store in search of ant traps. My decision on which ant trap to buy was easy; they only had one brand. After placing three traps at strategic points, I stood back to watch the ants tumble into the small, circular blue tins, only they didn’t. Instead, they circled the traps like a car in a rotary. Visions of the old Sagamore Bridge rotary came to mind as the ants encircled the traps more than once before spinning off in different directions. Some went to Bourne, some over the bridge to Cape Cod, and others traveled west towards Boston.
They are just getting used to them. By morning, these ants will have gotten the idea that they need to climb into the little holes and eat the contents. I am not sure why I thought ants should innately know they are supposed to eat poison.
I woke to find myself in the middle of a 1970’s Faberge Shampoo commercial. Apparently, in the middle of the night, the ants told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on. Not hundreds, but thousands of ants coursed through my house, their target - my kitchen.
One ant was just a little thing, but when multiplied it looked like this was their home, and I was the intruder. As if entering the ark, they traveled in pairs along the wooden molding, crossing a hallway of white carpet before entering the kitchen. Coming and going, the ants had their own secret code for staying in their lanes. Like a traffic copter reporting rush-hour traffic, I hovered over them, checking entrance and exit ramps and volume at the rotaries. This one little ant had multiplied into so much more.
When I washed the counter (again), to put out some different ant poison (made a trek to a different store), I found what started this frenzy. A handheld hummingbird feeder caught my eye and when I picked it up to wipe underneath, it looked different. Instead of being filled with a clear liquid, it looked dark. On closer inspection, I saw the sweet sugar water was gone and the feeder filled with dead ants. What a way to go! I placed little pools of poison at strategic places and started to pack. There was no way I was going to watch what was going to unfold, I spent the night at my sister’s house!
What started as just a little thing grew and grew to great proportions. It was exponential, and thoughts of Mr. Quinn, my eleventh-grade math teacher, came to mind. Pardon the math lesson, but if you add 2 + 2 = 4. Now 4 + 4 = 8. Then 8 + 8 = 16, and so on, and so on. It takes only nineteen of these exponential equations to reach over one million. One small thing can quickly compound.
Entering church recently, a man held open the door for me. After thanking him, I turned behind me to see a teenage boy coming up the stairs, so I held open the door for him. Then I noticed him turn to look back, and then patiently hold open the door for a slow-moving older woman.
Her face lit up when she saw what he was doing. Her smile was contagious. It was just a little thing…