Ants - den Boer

Frequently, ever more frequently, I was seeing ants, big black ants crawling up the brickwork on the front porch, and inside the house they were crawling across the kitchen floor, along the upstairs hallway and around the bathroom sink. Sometimes I let them be. Sometimes I squeezed them into a paper tissue.

I was also finding what looked like tiny crumbs inside my kitchen cupboards. I realized that these were bits of chewed up sawdust after someone informed me my big black ants were no ordinary run-of-the-mill ants: they were carpenter ants. 

These ants were eating up my home.

Would our insurance replace a house which had been reduced to a pile of sawdust? I wondered. But it wasn’t until several very large ants dropped out of the basement office ceiling onto my work area, that I finally declared war.

A neighbour recommended Green Cross Ant Killer. I faithfully placed little sticky droplets on windowsills and at doorways. The ants seemed to ignore them.

Rather annoyed, I turned to “Extermination” in the yellow pages. I called the answering services of four different companies. All four companies called me back promptly that same day—as I was preparing supper.

They each offered a different approach. There was the spray-everything-in-sight method; the scientific approach involving discussion, analysis, solution and maintenance; the expensive, “Why not have us chemically treat your lawn as well?” and the natural method which involved leaving food out for the ants to take back to their nests. Prices ranged from $225 to $350 with three-month, six-month and one-year guarantees, depending on the approach, not the price. The most expensive method had the shortest guarantee.

Needless to say the phone calls left me rather confused. Maybe my accountant husband could sort out this one.

It happened my parents had been invited to help eat the supper I was trying to make between phone calls. I should have asked Dad’s advice in the first place. It sounded rather Biblical, “Just watch them yourself.” (He didn’t actually say “sluggard.”) “See where they go. You’ll find the nest soon enough.”

The next day I tried following Dad’s advice—it was cheap and Marty recommended it—but the ants seemed to sense what I was doing. They wandered around in circles until I got bored. This took about a minute and a half.

They also must have sensed my interest in their demise—because they disappeared. Or are they in the dormant stage? There has to be some wisdom here somewhere.

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. (Proverbs 6:6–8)

An ant gets a lot done without reasoning or knowing why. It blindly follows a God-given instinct. Sometimes we turn every which way with our problems, but God always has the best answer. We have to trust Him. He can put the answer in us.


"Ants" is an excerpt from the book Blooming, This Pilgrim's Progress by Marian den Boer.