Ants In The Pants

The colony of ants who (which?) were happy up until recently eating away at the gatepost have braved it up the path to the doorstep where the four a.m. milkman deposits the milk and bottled juice; it must have been an exciting discovery, the bottles all dewy, cool, in the early mist of dawn and a promising ring of sweet liquid just below the aluminium caps of some so as I pick up the bottles, bleary-eyed, some bold mountaineers hitch a hike to foreign lands which they regret. The first one such finished up on the steel sink-top – a pathetic sight out of Kafka or Orwell, the worker out of work scurrying more and more hysterically, up and down in search of company, of work, disorientated, frantic; I brushed him, her, or it, onto the floor in the vague belief that ants and floors had more in common and could sort it out between them. The second put a cap on schoolboy jokes, making its presence known just as I lowered my pants upon the toilet seat… black trousers at that – I was as frantic in my antics, as that first ant on the draining-board. Perhaps some kind of retribution. The third turned up on my arm, as I sat like this at the computer..this time I was in care-for-all-things mood and hoped to tray it on a piece of paper back to its team – it wasn’t having any, skedaddled, almost jumped I’ll swear, off to this foreign floor that is not ever antland.. Maybe it was the same one which just now turned up on my arm again here, three times resisting brushing off until I, ungraciously, succeeded. And then I felt guilty, repentant, An old man on creaky knees, searching in the poorest light on a dark gray carpet for a small, reddish-brown ant.