Sweet consolation

It is beyond me, why you would sing stanza after stanza of "the ants going marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah"? Conceivably if you were an entomologist on the moon, you'd lift your voice in a deafening hurrah on detecting life in outer space. But I'm not. And these earthly ants are marching where they shouldn't.

Just yesterday, Jane asked if the black spots on her scrambled eggs were pepper. Looking closer, the pepper was moving...sugar ants. (Confession, she had slept a half hour later than the rest of the kids, and her breakfast had sat on the kitchen counter.) For some reason around here, the ants march double time. It is crazy, absurd. If I leave a knife resting over the edge of the sink, my fanciful mind thinks it is a diving board for ants.

Back to Jane, I did what a lazy, frugal parent would do, I decided to microwave the ants on her eggs rather than crack some more eggs and then clean another non-nonstick frying pan. I punched the microwave buttons with the fist of a killer. After 30 seconds the ants were still alive. After an additional two minutes I thought they were dead. I picked the ants off and left the pepper. Jane managed to eat a few bites before her eye caught movement on her breakfast plate. Unfortunately, the ants were incredible hardened to the microwave beams and some camouflaged stragglers revived and started goosestepping again. Now I no longer saw tiny black ants, I distinctly saw red arm bands and menacing uniforms. It was a Nazi brigade and Jane and I were disheartened allies.

It is a sad day in history when the forces of nature devour food set before children (the plural sounds more dramatic). Our consolation was that the ants hadn't found the banana bread.