One More Reason to Get Pregnant

There are benefits to having kids. For example, you can buy any toy that catches your fancy and act like it is for your child.

For example, there’s a mom at school who rides her kid’s caster board before the bell rings. I understand the woman’s attraction to forbidden fruit. We are supposed to be adult. Sensible. But sometimes the toys look so fun.

That’s how I unexpectedly fell in love with an ant farm. I had it bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about possessing it, owning it, making it mine.

We were holiday shopping in one of those high-tech gadget stores where everything is embedded with a computer chip and lights up via LED. Usually that kind of store leaves me cold. What do I care if my pillow can tell the temperature in Tokyo?

But then I saw the ant farm. The container was curve of thick acrylic. The “dirt” was a blue gel that looked like something you’d pick up at Planet Beauty. The ants were just ants. I guess they haven’t figured out how to high-tech those guys.

They were tunneling like crazy through the hair gel. Corridors wove around like the 5/405 Interchange if you threw in the 57 and the 91 on top. The little insect commuters were a work of futile performance art and I was entranced.

I bought one for my daughter. We had the option of collecting our own ants or buying them online. Since my pest service guy is like family now, I didn’t hold any hopes of finding any in the pantry or marching along the baseboards. And I would have been ticked if I had.

So we went online and paid extra to make sure our ants would arrive speedy quick and alive. I did not ask the pest control guy for his opinion. Two days later an envelope lay on my doormat dramatically marked “Live” and “Biohazard.” No telling what the UPS driver thought.

There was only one warning: Do not release into environment. Ha! What do they think this is? Jurassic Park? Our plan was to open the test tube, gently reach in with our plastic stick and allow them to climb out one by one—or even two by two if they preferred--into their new home.

They ignored the instructions, swarming out all at once. We screamed. I dumped the ants into the gel, but they were climbing those acrylic walls faster than I could fumble with the lid. We screamed some more. Louder this time.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to buy the biggest ants with the biggest mandibles because now several were making a break for it and we were still jumping around screaming. We corralled the escapees with dixie cups but how to get them back in their space-age home?

It wasn’t easy. There were casualties. But soon everyone was digging merrily, comrades forgotten. It was a rocky start but we’re good now. Love is like that.