I’d just stood up, preparing to flush, when I saw a carpenter ant moving near the base of the toilet.

Averaging about a half-inch long, carpenter ants are black, usually larger than sugar ants or red ants and, in my experience, don’t often bite.

While carpenter ants find their favorite food, “honeydew,” a substance found on certain plants, outdoors, they find other necessities such as water, nursery space and the like, indoors or out. When the clan needs a new home, nursery space, victuals, or water, “scouts” are charged with the quest and leave the colony to that end.

Over the past twenty years living in this house, as Winter softens into Spring, and Spring heats up into Summer, I have spied “scouts” ambling along on counters, meandering behind table legs, climbing up the kitchen wall, or sneaking behind the sink’s backboard. In their tireless work, “scouts” follow their cousins’ scent-tracks or start their own. I have watched as they halt, adjust a back leg, take an invisible sip from a tiny drop of water, or just stand still. I’ve seen their shiny, segmented, curvaceous black bodies zip around my house in their endless search.

When I’ve felt warm-hearted and have the time, I’ve carried errant creatures pinched between thumb and forefinger, or held in a loose fist, to my window where I’ve flung them from my bedroom window, or out the kitchen door, or from the downstairs bathroom window into the great beyond. Our house sits at the edge of a woods and is surrounded by evergreen trees and bushes, so the ants I’ve tossed over the years have more than likely landed safely only to return again to continue their quest.

Mostly, though, I have been heartless. I drop the crustacean invaders into the kitchen compost, flush them down the toilet, down the drain or, on very, very rare instances, even step on them, smashing their tiny, crunchy bodies into an ant paste.

It’s rare, though, really, my killing them. Hell, killing anything, has not been my preference. Rather, I have always wanted the ants to get it together and just leave; promptly, peacefully, and of their own volition, I would like them to voluntarily pack up and move to where they belong: not in my house.

I have even had conversations with my crunchy tenants. One-on-one as well as in groups, stressing to them that the trees, plants, bushes, grass, and logs that abound, outside of the walls of my house, are their rightful domain. I have asked them to leave.  Kindly and plainly, I have told them I don’t want to kill them or, like I said before, anyone. There is enough space for all of us here on the earth, but I don’t want them in my house. I pay the mortgage and the electricity and the water bill and they offer nothing in return. I’ve told them I pretty much stay out of their house and they should, by all rights respect my wishes and stay out of mine.

Meanwhile, in the story at hand…

…it was as I turned to flush the toilet, not yet standing, but still rising from the throne that I spotted the “scout” wandering around my bathroom floor. I acted quickly, before fully thinking things through and snatched him up. I think “scouts” are male, so I’ll refer to him as Elroy going forward. I picked up Elroy and tossed him into the shit and toilet paper-filled bowl whose contents were already swirling in the direction of the septic tank.

As I watched, I realized I had been lying to myself about preferring not to kill ants. The many ant assassinations I’d performed bubbled up into my thoughts. Over a decade of summers and ant invasions. Ant murder after ant murder filtered into my mind, piling one on top of the other until it hit me. All the killing I’d done of these little critters supported one thing. I was not at all averse to killing as I claimed earlier. I wasn’t a pacifist at all. Here I was watching blankly as Elroy went to his watery grave. It struck me then that I was a serial ant killer, and I needed to make right this most recent wrong.

I bent over and watched my thumb and forefinger, pincer-like, pluck out the toilet-papered Elroy. I carefully picked away the sodden toilet paper and Elroy’s legs returned to their quick, ant-like movement. I cupped my right hand loosely around him and sped to the window. With my left hand, I lifted the screen and with my other hand pitched Elroy into the night. As he sailed into the darkness, I wished him all the best.

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