Scatter

I found them dangling like that from the kitchen counter, in search of a few crusted drops of honey. One ant hung from the other’s leg, its black, articulated body turning in the air. I waited for it to lose hold and drop to the floor, but instead it just kept hanging on until my mother squished them both with a tissue, grimacing.

“Once one makes it home, the rest come running,” she said, and put some Borax around the corners of the counter.

“How do they know?”

She returned to peeling vegetables on the island, late afternoon light pooling through yellow curtains above the sink. “Know what?”

“How do they know where to go? How do they tell each other?”

She let out a long sigh. By then, I had already worn her down with eleven years of constant questioning, and her patience was thin. “They dance, I suppose. No, wait—that’s bees.” 

The idea that ants could relay information to each other, such as the location of a particularly juicy slice of watermelon left on the counter too long, stuck in my mind. I thought of their little antennas twitching, brushing against each other, communing in chatters and clicks. It was alien and exciting. 

I bounded upstairs, ignoring my mother’s calls to help her with dinner, and pushed open my bedroom window. Flakes of white paint fell away. Below, the branches of an ancient oak reached almost to my window. Ants lived on the ground—I had watched them pile out of their little hills in the dirt—but I’d also seen them scaling the tree bark outside. How high could they climb? Could they make it all the way up here?

I was determined to find out. That night, I collected scraps of strawberry from the compost—the whitish bits with the leaves still attached—and laid them in a line along my windowsill. I hoped it would be enough. Then I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep because of my excitement and the cold breeze moving through the open window. I pulled my quilt up to my chin and watched shadows of leaves quiver over the green bedroom wall.

All things considered, I was lucky. As an only child, I usually got what I wanted—green walls, a red bicycle, and hours and hours to build lean-tos on the unused, tick-infested pastures on our property. Our closest neighbors were twelve miles away. I had my secret coves and treetop hideaways, but no one to share them with.

My parents’ approach to homeschooling was a loose one. “Learning from the land,” they said. So I had free roam, and little to occupy my time. I brought home injured salamanders and baby turtles, and once tried to raise a luna moth from its larval stage into adulthood. But I didn’t know what it ate, and soon it shriveled up and died.

That morning, there was a single ant on my windowsill, hauling behind it a large chunk of strawberry flesh. I watched it meander back and forth across the brush-striped paint, then disappear into a tiny crack along the woodwork.

×

“They’re incredible creatures, you know,” my father told me while he cleared tent caterpillars from the pear trees. You had to burn them out, their webs catching and sparking like fireworks. Their bodies riled and dropped into his bucket.

I had told him about the ants in the kitchen, asked how they communicate.

“They’re the real team-workers,” he said. “We could learn a thing or two from them. When a bunch of them get together, they can move things a hundred times their weight. Did you know they can overpower a small animal?”

“How do you know?” I moved the bucket below him as he moved to the next branch.

“I’ve seen it.” My father had grown up on a farm, and told me stories about picking ticks off the dogs and crushing them in the driveway like fat grapes. He’d seen ants do a miraculous thing or two, like chaining together to make a road for other ants to pass along, or forming an enormous mound on top of a writhing grasshopper. 

Still, I wanted to know how ants spoke to each other. When I asked if they could communicate telepathically, like Carrie, my father laughed. “No,” he said. “They leave scent trails.”

×

I could hardly contain my excitement, and had to stop myself from watching the windowsill all day. I distracted myself with chores: scattering feed for the chickens, rotating the compost barrel, uprooting dandelions from the garden. They hadn’t turned to white puffs yet, and their yellow pollen stuck to my fingers.

By the following day, there were more of them, swarming around each strawberry butt in black rings of legs and antennae. I couldn’t drag myself away, watching as they formed a single-file line to carry bits of fruit back to their colony. Before long, I’d need to replenish their supply. 

I brought up a variety of foods for them to try, but they always liked fruits the best. Thinking of my father’s stories, I decided to test their ingenuity. I tied an apple core to the handle of the open window and let it dangle in the air, waiting.

When the ants first came, they scuttled around the rings of residue where the strawberries had been the previous day, lapping up little bits of syrupy-sweetness. Then I watched their antennas twitch toward the air, scenting out the apple core.

It took some time for them to organize. First, they climbed up the windowsill and along the underside of the frame, then down the wavering string. Below, ants piled on top of each other, forming links in a chain that stretched little by little toward the prize. They wavered slightly, but never fell, their limbs locked perfectly together. So they stretched and climbed, forming one cohesive mass, until those at the very top could sever off bites of fruit and pass them down the line.

I was thrilled by this development, and wanted to see what else they could do. Soon I had invited them past the windowsill, laying bait around my room for them to stretch and retrieve. Before long, they made little trails marching up the leg of my desk and into one of the drawers, and along the side of my dresser, and through a maze of old Star Wars figurines my dad had kept in the attic. I found they could make their chains stretch incredible lengths, spanning stacks of books and reaching up into the air, wavering like circus performers.

I had to keep my parents out of my room, of course. I told them I was working on a secret project that I would show them when I was finished—and I really planned to. My mother only sighed. “Don’t spend so long up there that you forget about us!”

My most ambitious attempt yet was when I dangled some watermelon rind from the ceiling fan. Like before, they made their way slowly up the wall and dripped down the thin cord in black splotches. Then they trickled further to the ground, their masses and formations growing ever more elaborate.

Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I watched this moving, granular form take shape. Branches wheeled out in multiple directions, then pulled inward again. Roundness rolled over ancillary structures. Differentiation.

When I stood up and came closer, the form shifted back, as if taking in a breath. I raised a hand, and watched the ants rush up over each other in synchronization, falling into place to return my gesture. It didn’t look much like a hand at first, but with practice, they learned.

I showed them how to pick things up, first demonstrating the behavior. “Now you.”

Hesitantly, the shifting, jittering form bent to the ground. It moved fluidly, losing some of its shape, and enveloping a plastic R2D2 figurine. It unfolded, rising again, and held the figure to its chest. Touching, considering, categorizing. Then it held it out to me.

Slowly, I took it. The ants retreated into their conglomerate form.

×

I didn’t really expect it to last. When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I would leave the ants with half a sandwich and go downstairs to eat with my parents. They talked about farmers markets and which local bluegrass bands were playing, but I wasn’t listening. All I could think of was when I could escape back up to the privacy of my room.

Once I’d scraped my plate clean and was finally excused, I rushed up the stairs and burst into my room.

The creature raised its head to me. It was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, holding a bottle cap in its hand. I had a collection in a box under my bed. 

“Did you… go looking through my stuff?”

The creature considered the cap, then held it out to me.

“It’s fine,” I said. It didn’t know any better. “You can keep it.”

And it tucked it away somewhere inside itself.

×

It was strange at first, trying to communicate with the thing. I came to think of it as one thing, one being, unless I looked too closely at its rapidly-moving parts that were always shuffling over each other to produce the smallest of movements. It was always in motion, even when holding still, something that made me dizzy to focus on too long. I didn’t know what to do or say, but it waited for me, expectantly.

“Do you know what this is?” I showed it a compass from my desk. It observed the dial closely, turning as it walked toward the window. 

For a moment I was frightened that it might disassemble itself or climb right out, but it seemed to be mostly motivated by curiosity. It turned back around.

“Oh! I bet you’ve never seen—” I’d been given a tiny screenless iPod for my birthday that year. I turned it on and plugged in a pair of earbuds, the only way it produced sound. I popped one into my ear and indicated that the creature should do the same. I pressed play. 

We listened. Around the place it had decided was its ear, tiny kernels buzzed with vibration, sending ripples through the rest of its body. 

The thing slept curled on the floor next to my bed. I wasn’t sure that ants needed to sleep, but it seemed to want to stay close to me, so I let it. It was comforting in a strange way, like I was sharing my room with a sibling I’d never had. Before falling asleep, I whispered secrets I’d never told anyone before. When I ran out, I told it other things, like how I’d found owl bones inside an old rotted log, and how I envied the kids who went to school, and how it had felt to accidentally touch an electric fence.

I wanted to show it everything I could, but I knew I had to be careful. I also knew that one day or another, my mother would come into my room for the laundry, and would see it, and would probably have a freak-out. So I decided we needed to find somewhere else to stay.

While my mother was in the sunroom hanging laundry and my father was out mowing, we snuck downstairs together. It followed me closely, stopping where I stopped, peering curiously around corners.

We crept out the screen door and across the lawn to the old garden shed behind the house. It was made of rotting wood, and neither of my parents had much use for it anymore. It stored old odds and ends—rusted shears, chicken wire, fertilizer. It was dark and musty when we got inside.

“You, stay here,” I said, gesturing to the space around us.

It looked around.

“Do you understand?”

It looked back at me.

“Nod if you understand.”

It nodded.

“Good.” I let out a breath. Now we wouldn’t have to worry about anyone finding out. This could stay our secret, tucked away in the safety of the garden shed.

“Now,” I said, “I have to teach you a game.” I took out a piece of paper and drew four squares. “This is where you’ll live. This is who you’ll marry, and this is what kind of car you’ll drive.”

×

I spent as much time in the shed as I could. This became more difficult when the seasons changed, and the grass was crisp with dew in the mornings. I thought the creature might get cold, so I brought out heaps of blankets for it to nest in.

Even though I was the only one who spoke with words, we never ran out of things to talk about. The creature itself emitted a low sort of humming noise, the sound of tiny bodies rubbing against each other. This was how I could sense its emotions—it hummed steadily when calm or thinking, and high and abrupt when it was excited or startled. Each time I shrugged in through the rusted sliding door, the creature would hum in delight and swarm to its feet to greet me.

It could have gone anytime, and sometimes I wondered why it didn’t. It could have disassembled itself, scattered into nothing more than a thousand grains of rice and slipped out under the door, or burrowed into the woodwork. I could only assume that it wanted to stay, with me, in this form.

My mother had caught onto my antics about the shed, watching me take food and pillows to build a fort, dandelions for us to chain together, Polaroid photos I had taken of things around the farm.

“You have to be careful in there,” she told me. “All those rusty old tools. Remember how badly your last tetanus shot hurt? Maybe we should have your father clean things out if you want to spend so much time—”

“No!” It came out with more force than I’d intended, and my mother took a step back. “It’s fine, I mean. I promise I’ll be careful.”

She frowned playfully. “When are you going to tell us about this big project of yours?”

“It’s almost done!” I said. “Just don’t go in there, alright?”

She crossed her arms. “Sure.”

I didn’t trust my mother. That night, while the crickets chirped, I had a talk with the creature by lantern light. I was aware more than usual of the smell it gave off, earthy and metallic, like so many coins rattling around in a tin can, like wet soil.

“If she comes in here, you have to…” I gestured with my hands, like a sand castle falling apart. “You know.”

It hummed questioningly.

“She can’t know,” I started, unsure of how to explain. “She won’t understand. She might want to get rid of you.”

When I said this, the thing was quiet for a long time. Then it reached out for me. 

I had never touched it. I could never quite get over my instinctual repulsion when it got close, and I began to see the tiny insects instead of the whole. I would doubt for a minute that any of this could be real. But then it would do something undeniably human, something it had seen me do, like pulling the blankets over its shoulders or going to peer out through the foggy window over the lawn. 

I stood, picking up the lantern. “I have to go. See you tomorrow, okay?”

It did not make any sound in reply.

×

What happened that night is hard for me to piece together, even now. I woke up to commotion outside—a clatter of metal on wood, old equipment tumbling. When I looked out the window, there was my mother, running. She was barefoot. At first I thought she was on fire, the way she was flailing and tearing at her face. And then I saw them swarming over her, collecting in large black clumps, swallowing her up. I heard her choke out a scream and fall, writhing in the grass. She stopped moving, but the ants kept moving all over her.

It took two hours for the fire department to come. I thought she was dead.

All these years later, my mother has still never told me what she saw when she went into the shed, or why she’d done it. Had she attacked first, the creature only defending itself? This was what I wanted to believe. Or the more frightening possibility: the thing had sprung on her the moment she pushed open the door. 

She never spoke about that night. She never spoke at all.

When I see ants these days, on the counter in my apartment, I don’t have the heart to kill them. I also can’t stand to have them inside—I can already smell that wet-earth-metal scent—knowing they’re leaving chemical trails for the rest to follow. Right back to me.

So I pick them up on a corner of junk mail and take them outside. I put them somewhere safe—on the bark of a tree, the underside of a log, the crater of a leaf. I try to be gentle with them. They’re such small creatures, after all.