Ecology

Ants, molasses, and compassion

McKenna Snow
MSMU Class of 2023

(12/2022) Seeing ants in one’s kitchen typically results in some response like, "quick! Get the ant killer!" Or, perhaps, the reaction is a call to an exterminator. Whatever the case, rarely does anyone ever just say to the ants, "here, you look hungry—let me provide some food for you!"

There is at least one person with such a compassionate response: Audrey Hillman. To the surprise of likely many households, she keeps a small feeding station on her kitchen counter for a little colony of ants that first paid her a visit a few months ago. They are given a robust menu of leftover salmon, molasses, cookie crumbs, pumpkin seeds, and more, all in a serving size applicable to an ant table, if there ever was such a thing.

Her kitchen counter is ordinary enough, with a little coffee maker, tea collection, sink, bowl of fruit, and a lamp. A little trail of ants gravitates to the assortment of ant food over by the lamp, and, notably, they do not stray anywhere else. When the ants first arrived, Audrey had the same reaction as most people: "I got the ant traps," Audrey explained, "and they ignored them. They just didn’t bother. And I said, ‘well if I can’t beat them, I’m going to join them.’… I had a couple of crumbs of cake out on the counter [which the ants loved] and I said, ‘okay, that’s how I’m going to keep them away from crawling all over this kitchen.’ So I set up a feeding station, and I just put out cake and a little molasses and whatever else happened to be out, and they were great! They just stayed pretty much over there."

The ants were coming from a small hole on the side of the counter, and walked up and across the counter to the food. Audrey explained that at first, the ants coming out of the counter found the food and would wander around to the edge of the counter, and over to the other side, and all around taking long ways to the food. Eventually, the ants "figured out the shortest point between a and b," and efficiently made use of that route on a daily basis. Since then, the rest of the counter was devoid of ants. It was almost as though they knew what was out specifically for them, and what was off-limits.

At one point, however, Audrey said that she found the ants all over the sink. Though startled at first, Audrey then said she realized, "well if I was thirsty, I would go to where the water is." With a smile, she continued, "so I put out a little puddle of water [by their food] and they went to the water that was over there, and that was the end of dealing with them in the sink." It seemed too simple to be true, but as I watched the little ants explore the cookie crumbs, I knew they were content with what they had been given.

After glancing back at the sink, Audrey said, "if you’re observant and you give it a little bit of thought, rather than just turning on the faucet and flushing them down the drain every day, [just consider that] they’re looking for water." The ants’ need for water reminds us that we share much in common with nature. How quick we are to take on an us versus them mentality, separating ourselves from nature in a way we were never meant to be separated.

With a background in professional gardening, Audrey stated, "I’m more of a plant person than an insect person, but the two go hand in hand." Modern agricultural practices seem to have largely forgotten this fact. One does not have to look far to see how man has tried to sterilize and curate the world he lives in so that nature is treated more like a machine than as living creatures and plants. Consider modern agriculture practices, especially industrial corporations, whose heavily-structured monoculture fields—endless rows of the same, one crop—deny the plants and soil their need for biodiversity. Insects, birds, and other visitors are told they are unwelcome, as they would hurt the overall yield and quality of the crops. The consequences of this imposed dynamic? The pitting of man and his needs against nature and its own needs; in reality, they can and should interdepend on one another. Man is not meant to be an alien to the natural world, but a steward and a guardian of it. A man only becomes an alien to the natural world when this identity is flipped so that he merely becomes a miner of the finite soil he works with.

Insects, especially bees, are harmed by excessive habitat destruction and pesticide, for example, Audrey explained. All of nature becomes "in trouble… it’s detrimental to the invertebrates, [and] they’re what make the world go round, because they are at the bottom of the food chain." Audrey glanced out the window, where bird feeders hung. "I look at the birds, and the birds need food for their babies; they don’t need beetles and the hard shell things, they need caterpillars that are soft, that can support the baby birds as they’re growing; so with fewer moths there’s fewer caterpillars… so there’s been a plummet in bird populations as well. So I try to do my bit. I try to support what I can on this little bit of land."

How do we heal this broken bond between man and the land he cultivates? How do we heal the broken relationship between human beings and the natural world? We cannot all change the practices of industrial farms so that they are more sustainable, regenerative, and conducive for human and animal flourishing. But, we all can practice integrity and respect for nature starting in the home, cultivating compassion for wildlife, and supporting one’s local farmers.

However, not everyone needs to welcome ants in their home in the same way Audrey has. Notably, Audrey stated that if it were a different insect, such as a wasp, she would "try to catch them and throw them back out." Those insects are not allowed to "stay long enough to set up shop," so they are caught and put back outside. Reflecting on the rural topography of Emmitsburg, Audrey said, "We live in the country. We can’t make this [home] impenetrable to nature, so we just send them back out." Certainly, insects belong outside, and it would be insensible to turn one’s home so inside out that its function to shelter human beings no longer protects them from the natural elements and other creatures. However, practicing compassion for the creatures who do make it inside, especially by simply sending them back outside, would be a helpful place to begin in healing the modern mindset of "us versus them." Human beings certainly are different from animals and plants, but this should not put us at such drastic odds with them.

"I like to try to encourage the wildlife," Audrey said. "Every animal, everything has a purpose; whether we appreciate it or not is another thing. And, how well we tolerate it is another thing." Appreciation for nature is a virtue worth cultivating. Growing in this aspect can occur in surprising ways, but ants, a little bit of molasses, and compassion can teach us quite a lot.