Curiousity Killed the Ants

I’m sure most of you have heard the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” at one point of your lives or another. But in case you’ve either been living under a rock with no television or books, or somehow managed to avoid hearing or reading this phrase, I’ll tell you what it means. It simply means that being too curious about something can harm you. Well, in this story that I’m about to tell you, my curiosity hurt not only me, but actually killed something as well.

When I was about 5 years old, I was in my grandparents’ house in Valenzuela. I was a bit of an outdoorsman when I was a kid back then, riding my bike, jumping around, playing with dogs, throwing balls, helping the driver wash the car, those kinds of things. Well, one day, my ball was lost, my bike got too small, the dogs were asleep, and the car was spotless. Obviously, that left me with a whole lot of nothing to pass the time. As my boredom increased and desperation for entertainment grew, I suddenly saw an anthill filled with tiny red ants. Not the kind black ants who just tickle you when they walk on you, but the evil red ants that bite you and hurt you. Anyway, being 5, I couldn’t possibly have known that, and I was really curious about how many ants there were in the anthill. Could there possibly be 1000? 2000? A million? It was a mystery to me. So I decided to find out. I got a small grass cutter, which looks like a small sickle, and started hacking away at the anthill, sending the ants into chaos. Being so happy that I finally found something to do, I decided to start stepping on the anthill as well to send them into more chaos, which equaled more happiness for me.  The chaos I mentioned involved hundreds of ants scurrying around the sand, trying to find a place to hide. It also involved quite a lot of ants dying, some under my foot, some crushed by the grass cutter. It was really amusing! I was a crazy kid, I know. Anyway, unfortunately for me though, some ants were smart enough to know that I was the one destroying their home. So, while I watched the majority of the ants run away or die, about 7 ants, possibly more, climbed onto my feet, and bit me. I remember feeling sudden pain and itchiness on my feet, so, being a kid, I did what any normal kid would do and ran back inside and straight towards my mommy. When I got to her though, I was told off, which sort off added insult to injury.

If there was one thing I learned from the whole experience, aside from the obvious “be careful” or “don’t be too curious” lessons, it is that you definitely should not mess around with red ants, or they will hurt you. A lot. Avoid them as much as possible.