What Are The Ants Saying?

Ants. There are ants everywhere. Tiny pinprick ants, sugar ants, stocky black ants dogmatically marching in unexpected places, and the big black ants who love to sink their fangs into tender flesh when least expected.

They are burrowing underground – I live in fear of waking up to a basement as my house descends into the excavated foundation – they are marching into the roof, nowhere seems safe from these critters.

I have a friend who says when the ants get antsy, they are telling you stuff is going to happen. Like storms and earthquakes and other upheavals. We haven’t had too many storms this summer, but we have had a flood load of rain, and not many hot, lowveld summer days.

On the days of no rain, the skies have been leaden and heavy, casting a sense of oppression over this lovely rural town of ours, muting the colours of the trees in bloom. Climate change? Or a heavenly reflection of the unhappy state of the globe right now.

We, in South Africa, have an election at the end of May. I came home one day to the sight of many Cyril Ramaphosas, one on each lamppost. My heart sank at the thought of having to see Kermit each morning when I opened my curtains or looked out the window, or headed out.

It seems someone else felt as I did.

I went to house sit for three days and as I turned into my street on my return, poor Cyril was bisected, parts of him blowing in the breeze, and over the days he has ragged and tattered until on some posts his face is no longer.

“That’ll teach you to be nasty to Israel,” I thought, seeing any number of portents under this cloud-ridden sky.

The adage “Politics is a dirty game” has never seemed truer than it does today. The interminable bombing of Gaza, the Ukraine battling bully boy Russia, unresolved conflicts in Syria, Somalia, Mozambique, and Central Africa, to name a few, none of which seem to have any resolution in sight, regardless of initiatives, UN resolutions, threats, and promises. The fighting goes on, the bodies mount up.

The greatest focus Is on Gaza and the plight of the residents of that land. Little attention is given to Israel’s pleas for their hostages to be returned. The Islamic propaganda machine is effective, and reason seems to have evaporated in this modern-day world. Rhetoric is shouted mindlessly, people are unable to answer simple questions about what they are shouting. Scary stuff.

Do you know kidnapping is mentioned in the Bible?

Exodus 21 v 16:

He who kidnaps a man or sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.

No wonder Josphe’s brothers were so terrified when they came face to face with him many years later.

Again in Deuteronomy 24 v 7:

If a man is found kidnapping any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and mistreats him or sells him, then that kidnapper shall die: and you shall put away the evil from among you.

I understand better why the Israelis are so incensed that their people are kidnapped to use as barter.

Rape is also considered unacceptable.

Genesis 34 talks about the rape of Dinah by Shechem, a Hivite prince. Interestingly, it is believed the Hivites lived in the hilly region of Lebanon.

Verse 2: And when Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her he took her and lay with her, and violated her.

Verse 7: And the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it; and the men were grieved and very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, a thing which ought not to be done.

Deuteronomy 22 talks about crimes against women.

Verse 25: If a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside and the man forces her and lies with her then only the one who lay with her shall die,

But you shall do nothing to the young woman, there is in the young woman no sin deserving of death, for just as when a man rises against his neighbour and kills him, even so is this matter.

Rape, kidnap, cold-blooded murder seem to have left humanity unmoved. Some of those young women were so violently raped that day in October their pelvic bones were broken.

Let that sink in.

And it has been proven, to the Al Jazeera reporter I heard saying he had not had the rapes confirmed. It took the UN long enough, but they got there in the end – the evidence was overwhelming.

A photographer won an award for a photograph showing an SUV full of Hamas fighters parading the violated and damaged body of a young girl to many shouts of approval.

He won an award for this photograph.

That did get some comment. Enough for the body to now be blurred when the picture is reproduced by some publications, the few that have a moral standard.

Imagine if that was your daughter, or sister, or mother, or even friend.

Life is cheap in this world of 2024. It seems politicians are more concerned with numbers at the ballot box than enforcing laws to protect humanity, so criminals looking to increase already inflated bank accounts get away with their crimes year after year. Those living in desperate poverty who step out of line when they take what isn’t theirs because they want a little of what so many in the West take for granted: a home, running water, a flush loo, a school for themselves or their children, clothes to wear, warmth in winter, shade in summer.

So, to the ants. Should we be taking their activity seriously? Are they preparing for some apocalyptic catastrophe? Should we be looking to ourselves, and maybe asking what we can do to make this world a little more palatable before the waters rise and we find we don’t have an ark?

Or are these simply bleak imaginings on my part because I need a few days of clear skies and sunlight?