Personal lowercase｜Ant Road

After the writing of this article was completed, I submitted the Lin Rongsan Literary Award for that year, and received a comment that the ending did not conform to reality, and I did not win the award after considering other factors. It was later republished in the "Liberty Times" on February 21, 2018.

Ants crawl on everything.

After moving here, the ants in the house have changed. There were not too many ants in the old home at first. Occasionally, the food was forgotten to be collected, or the tie was not properly tied, or the elastic fatigue of the rubber band caused the door to open wide, which would attract ants to move food. At that time, the ants were dark brown, and their attitude was unhurried, but they would bite. In fact, if you don't bite everyone, you will be fine, and you will not know what food has suffered. A bite is equivalent to a declaration of occupying land and planting a flag. One mouthful, two mouthfuls, three mouthfuls, four or five or six mouthfuls, if you bite your heart out, you will no longer be able to allow the alien species to be so arrogant on the site. Follow the road to get the nest, either water or medicine. Since you don't grasp my rare virtue of good life, I don't need to be polite to you.

It's just that things never went smoothly. Once the killing ring is opened, it is often not possible to stop it if you want to. Sometimes I wonder how the ants communicate with each other. It stands to reason that all things in the world should cherish life. I know that there is a crazy woman who got up and killed ants and killed her eyes. So many front-line soldiers have died heroically. Shouldn't a warning radio wave be issued to notify the luggage upstairs and downstairs to find another place? ? Apparently ants don't think so. The more crazy I kill, the more crazy they occupy. Originally, it only ran along the food that had been opened. Later, the potted waste soil on the balcony was found (maybe they yearn to be close to the natural terroir), and there was in the pile of laundry (for some reason, the underwear was often bitten), and the packaged dry goods were complete. Cans can also see traces of them, wrapping around like magic on the airtight packaging, hoping to find a door to enter, very insistent.

For a while, ants flew and landed on me from time to time, and I couldn't find the source. I suspected that the ant road extended to the ceiling, and those ants with insufficient climbing strength fell by accident. One day I was bitten a few times for no apparent reason. Suddenly, I stared at the electric fan that was blowing hard and shook my head for a while. I flipped the switch and pulled out the plug to disassemble the fan into eight pieces. I unloaded it to the base, and I was surprised to find the ants. Dust and hair were brought in from all directions, and they built a good and comfortable nest inside, which made my scalp tingle. I don't know if those ants camped in the fan for some kind of secret mission for high-altitude training, but when they descended on the wind, they couldn't control their appetite for meat, and when they bit, they leaked their tracks.

Another time I took the towel hanging by the bedside to take a shower, and wiped myself after washing. If you don't wipe it, it will be fine. Once you wipe it, something is wrong all over your body. If you look closely, there are several ants scurrying around on your hands and legs. I panicked and turned on the water to wash myself more thoroughly. After washing, I grabbed the towel and tore it open. There were dense and illogical ant colonies on the surface of the towel. I was so angry and irritable that I threw the whole towel into the hot water without taking care of killing and creating karma. Looking at the ant corpse that floated to the surface, I wondered why you forced me to come here.

If there are swollen mounds on my body that are often bitten by ants, each piece is secretly red, like a shy hickey, but itchy enough to make a living person collapse. It is also like a battle record between humans and ants, using the body as a scoreboard, one score is scored one point, depicting the ant's pioneering territory, and the human beings' retreat.

When I was a child, I often returned to my hometown with my mother. My grandfather and grandmother planted fruit, pineapple, mango, lychee, lotus, and mist in a small village in Pingtung. It was a tropical atmosphere. There is nothing in the orchard, there is no shortage of snakes, mosquitoes and gnats, and the most feared is a red ant with a red head and a red body. It is only fat, and the ant is firm and shiny, and at a glance, it can be seen that it is not easy to deal with. Often when I play among the fruit trees, I accidentally step on the ant road. As long as I attract one or two upper body and take a bite, our rural vacation will come to an end with my rapidly swollen hands and feet. At that time, my mother took me to a dermatology department in Shengping Street, Kaohsiung City. Every time the doctor saw me walking into the clinic with a swollen palm or the back of my foot, he smiled and said, "I was bitten by a red ant again?" . After the swelling subsides, there will be a blister, which is the bite of the ant; when the blister fades (or is scratched by me), a scar will be left. Dr. Wu is my eternal savior. His ointment is amazing, not cold, but it relieves itching. I always hoped that he would give me two more boxes to save, as if I had a premonition that I would be at war with ants for a lifetime.

Sometimes I can't help but be thankful that I'm getting older and thicker, or that my immune system is enhanced, or that the species of ants are different. Now it is bitten, swollen or swollen, itchy or itchy, and the bite scar is still preserved, but it is no longer like switching hands (or feet) as in childhood. Even so, when I go to the countryside, I still dare not take it lightly. After all, Dr. Wu and I are in the south and the north, and the sky is high and the emperor is far away. If I get bitten and swollen into a bread man again, I am afraid that I will not be able to meet him, so I will amputate myself first.

My roommates and I were happy when we moved to this place. The new environment and new atmosphere, although it is an old house that has been seen for 30 years, but the layout is square, bright and airy. Looking at the work vacancy during the Lunar New Year holiday, we happily moved in.

The joy is not a few months away, just after the spring equinox, the ant plague will come. First, there were lines of ant roads in an orderly manner by the door in the corner. We observed each other for a while, but we couldn't find any particularly rampant behavior in them. In particular, I see that these ants are not the dark brown ants of the old family. They have black heads and swaying yellow ant stomachs. They are smaller in size and do not have a trace of ferocity that will bite people, so they will go with them.

But it's always like this: You want to coexist peacefully, and the other person doesn't necessarily appreciate it. We have a lot to do with moving, and we are busy with work on weekdays. In this regard, the ants played the role of eunuchs in which the emperor did not rush to the death of eunuchs. From time to time, we will find that a certain box or bag that is still sealed has climbed a line of ants. When we take it apart, we must have some goods inside that have been plagued by ants. It may be instant noodles, it may be rock candy, whatever it is, ants will gnaw a small hole and work hard to transport our food storage to them.

However, those ants are a bit over the top.

Originally, I wanted to say, well, just think that they are here to remind us to organize our daily routines quickly, and not to live a cardboard life all the time. Whenever the ants look at the box, we organize the box, and sometimes we just take it apart to find something that can't be found everywhere. It might be some kind of apocalypse. Until a certain time, my roommate told me with a bitter face that she had been sleeping for several nights and was woken up by an ant in the middle of her sleep.

"And these ants are very annoying. You will stink them if you kill them!" said the roommate.

We discussed it for a long time, but we couldn't figure out how to solve it for a while, so we had to put it on hold. However, the roommate's complaint was like flipping some kind of switch. After that conversation, the ants not only got on her bed, but also crawled over to my desk. Often when I work on the computer, I see ants entering my line of sight. The snacks on my table were tightly packed, and when I saw the ants invaded, I was even more determined to stuff the snacks into my mouth as much as possible, leaving no stock at all. As long as the ant colony is sneaking around me to probe my brain, I will either clear the table and move the mountain, or I will make an earthquake in surprise, hoping that the sudden change will scare the ants and make them retreat; The ant killer, and then start the notification system, don't bother me again.

A few days later, another roommate's room also fell. In addition to the room, there were ants in the bathroom, and the kitchen was the worst-hit area. All the raw, cooked, salty, sweet, and dry soups were all scum, and the ants were not spared. Seeing the joy of hunting hearts makes me wonder how long they have been hungry, or how numerous their index fingers are, to be satisfied with such a variety of food.

This batch of ants is more advanced than the ants in the old family, and they don't know how to stop. If you erase this ant road, they don't bother to go far, just open another one next to it; bite a packet of biscuits, but they have to open another packet before they are emptied. You think they want everything, but they only pick the good stuff. Do not eat too much processed, and the compounds are even less eye-catching. Alishan's handmade brown sugar zipper bag was not pressed and opened a small mouth, they took advantage of the situation to move mighty; a box of egg rolls ate three and left two, I simply clamped the folded mouth of the bag, and they were close to each other. Not interested. That day, I picked up the egg roll and looked at the ingredients. There was nothing in the pile. After thinking about it, I threw it into the trash can. I don't even eat ants, why should I.

For a long time, I admired the perseverance of these ants to explore. They love to explore the unknown, even if life-threatening. When I found that whether my mug contains water or tea, sugar or no sugar, as long as I leave it for a while and then pick it up to drink, there will be ant corpses floating in it, and my nerves are getting closer and closer to the critical point. point. It’s okay if you carry the food, occasionally climb up to me and take a bite, and I’ll just flick you off; but I really don’t like that I just want a drink of water when I’m not at work, and because you’re dead in it, I have to Get up and pour out, wash, and refill a glass. Anything that disrupts the pace of work must be condemned.

Repeatedly pouring water to wash the cup is annoying. So I found a deep dish and filled it with water, and put a moat on the cup. Water can isolate the smell and cut off the road, but it cannot isolate the determination of these ants to explore the unknown. I thought that they would know the road was blocked by tapping the water with their tentacles, but I didn't expect them to plunge into the water one after another, just wanting to know what treasures were hidden in the island in the middle of the lake. What kind of obsession, is this the ant world swimming across Sun Moon Lake? Even if you are lucky enough to swim to Cup Island and explore the secret realm, what can you carry back alone? What's more, if you swim through a pool of water, what you find is just another pool of water.

I watched as the corpses of ants floated on the surface of the deep water. They tried their best to move their limbs, but unfortunately they died before landing. At the last moment of exhaustion, will they regret that they chose the wrong path? I saw a few brave ants swimming past the corpses of their companions and fortunately climbing the cup. I watched them find that it was just the same water, and they were pacing back and forth on the edge of the cup in a panic (how could this happen? What should I do now? Swim back?), is that a feeling that I often have, that life is futile?

One day, I learned from a friend that there is an ant medicine that is very effective. I turned around and placed an order on the website. Suddenly, I had a thirst for knowledge, so I checked the background of ants. Or maybe it's some kind of motive that doesn't want you to die in my world. Anyway, I learned that the dark brown ants in the old family were Chinese single ants, and now this kind of ants will leave a smelly call when they die. Black-headed panic ants; when I was still playing in the orchard, the invasive red fire ants had not yet appeared in Taiwan. Wikipedia tells me that the invasive RIFA originated in South America, was introduced to the United States in the 1930s, and spread to Taiwan around 2001 through container transportation and turf export. At that time, my grandparents had already distributed the orchard to my uncles, and I would no longer go back to my hometown with my mother.

While waiting for the arrival of the goods, my roommate and I split up to confirm the ant tracks, so that we could decide where to put the medicine. The strange thing is that the ant roads that were originally so annoying have disappeared one by one.