Sunday, October 29, 2017

Thoreau's battle of the Ants

I had flipped back my insulated Hot Tub cover on my outside hot tub and was faced with a quandary. Most of you not having given Ahimsa Vows in the early 80s like I did to not kill anything (which was one of the best things I ever did in my life by the way) was having me puzzled as to how to deal with this quandary.

The quandary I faced was that while I was gone from my hot tub for 2 days somehow little sugar ants had moved into my insulated hot tub cover and I wondered how I should handle this. 

But then, I thought of Thoreau's battle of the ants which is interesting reading if you were never forced to read this for High School English class like I was.

Today, it made me think (the ants in my hot tub cover moving their eggs around) about how everything in life is multiple use. For example, it made me think how animals minding their own business (literally anywhere they live in the U.S. or world) often become road kill because they don't know the rules of the road because they are not taught like human beings to even know what a road is and so often are victims of their ignorance and dead along the road especially as young ones.

But, it also made me think about Earth in how we think it is ours as humans not realizing the millions of years it was here before we were and who thought they owned it then or now? Galaxy wide?

So, as I moved the cover completely off the hot tub I thought about all these things as was grateful to the universe and God for sharing this wisdom with me today.

I moved the cover off so they wouldn't accidentally fall into the water and drown.

However, it doesn't mean my wife and our housekeeper have taken Ahimsa vows too because they haven't. It just means I try to save the life of all creatures on earth that I can when they are in my jurisdiction (home space).

I personally find mosquitos and black widow spiders the hardest to deal with so I usually dispatch both. But, I usually keep one daddy longlegs spider in our bedroom or bathroom because they cannot pierce human skin because their jaws aren't big enough. But, simultaneously they are the most poisonous spider on earth.

I have often realized that humans would be extinct likely now if daddy Long leg spiders could bit through human skin and kill us but they can't. So, i use them to kill all the other spiders in our house so I don't have to put them all outside which I will do one by one as they let me. However, if  a spider won't let me put it outside or bites my wife or I they are dispatched too.

Ahimsa is about practicality, you save all the lives of creatures you can and still stay alive yourself. IT's a practical way to the ecological survival of our planet and ALL it's species.

 

 

Walden - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
Walden is a book by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon .... Thoreau's interaction with a mouse that he lives with, the scene in which an ant battles a smaller ant, and his frequent encounters with cats.
Author‎: ‎Henry David Thoreau
Published‎: ‎August 9, 1854 (‎Ticknor and Fields‎: ...
Original title‎: ‎Walden; or, Life in the Woods
Genre‎: ‎Memoir

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Thoreau's 'Walden': 'The Battle of the Ants' - ThoughtCo

https://www.thoughtco.com › ... › English Grammar › Readings & Resources
Sep 26, 2017 - Revered by many readers as the father of American nature writing, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) characterized himself as "a mystic, ...
Missing: treatise

[PDF]The Battle of the Ants Henry David Thoreau One day when I went out ...

www.public.iastate.edu/~bccorey/105%20Folder/Battle%20of%20the%20Ants.pdf
critic, was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts. ... duellum, but a bellum,1 a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against.
Missing: treatise

Thoreau's 'Walden': 'The Battle of the Ants'

Classic From America's Preeminent Nature Writer

getty_thoreau-463976653.jpg
Henry David Thoreau. (The Print Collector/Getty Images)
Updated September 26, 2017
Revered by many readers as the father of American nature writing, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) characterized himself as "a mystic, a transcendentalist and a natural philosopher to boot." His one masterpiece, "Walden," came out of a two-year experiment in simple economy and creative leisure conducted in a self-made cabin near Walden Pond. Thoreau grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, now part of the Boston metropolitan area, and Walden Pond is near Concord.

Thoreau and Emerson

Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, also from Concord, became friends around 1840, after Thoreau had finished college, and it was Emerson who introduced Thoreau to transcendentalism and acted as his mentor. Thoreau built a small house on Walden Pond in 1845 on land owned by Emerson, and he spent two years there, immersed in philosophy and beginning to write what would be his masterpiece and legacy, "Walden," which was published in 1854.

Thoreau's Style

In the introduction to "The Norton Book of Nature Writing" (1990), editors John Elder and Robert Finch observe that "Thoreau's supremely self-conscious style has kept him continuously available to readers who no longer draw a confident distinction between humanity and the rest of the world, and who would find a simpler worship of nature both archaic and incredible."
This excerpt from Chapter 12 of "Walden," developed with historical allusions and an understated analogy, conveys Thoreau's unsentimental view of nature.

'The Battle of the Ants'

From Chapter 12 of "Walden, or Life in the Woods" (1854)  by Henry David Thoreau
You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another.
Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members.
They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had dispatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar--for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red--he drew near with rapid pace till be stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right foreleg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame.
I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick--"Fire! for God's sake fire!"--and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.
I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near foreleg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them, which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished.
I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hôtel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "Aeneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "this action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity." A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Originally published by Ticknor & Fields in 1854, "Walden, or Life in the Woods " by Henry David Thoreau is available in many editions, including "Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition," edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer (2004).
 

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