We've Lost Containment!

I just woke up from a nightmare. Maxwell was there in short order to comfort me and assured me with his purr that he had control of any situation. That was comforting. I was wide awake. I looked at the clock hoping that it was at least 7:00am. No such luck. It said "05:32 AM". Yuck. So, I went to the bath room to "think". I often think that some of the world's deepest thoughts are conceived in the bath room.

I was so tired last night. I went to bed at 9:00. I know that's early, but why fight it if your body is telling you that it's tired? I had a migraine most of the day and was out of sorts. I stopped by Chili's on the way home for a bite to eat. It's not my favorite place, but it was just off the freeway and just about all I had energy for. I got home, fed the cats, and watched TV for awhile. But I still had this headache that I couldn't get rid of and I was tired.

I got into my usual night clothes (nothing), and went to bed. I turned on the TV to watch something, anything, until I got tired. Nothing of interest was on. It's funny, I have cable and get about 180 channels, and I was bored with it all. I turned the TV off and thought to myself that I'll never get to sleep. Before I knew it, I was having a dream about something that happened a long time ago. I was nine years old. The year was 1963. At that time, we were in the midst of the "Cold War" with Russia. Paranoia was high in our country. In fact, when I was born, the only thing they could give birthing mothers to calm them down and alleviate the pain was ether. It often made them nauseated. They gave ether to Mom to calm her down during the birth of me, and she recalled later that she thought the Russians were invading. Actually, I often have that effect on people, come to think of it. She also recalled that I was born during a big winter storm. I was born on December 31st. I was storming outside and lightening was everywhere. Just as I was born, according to Mom, the sky lit up with lightening with a huge clap of thunder and the electricity went out. All got quiet, except for my crying. She said it was eerie, and the people who took me away after birth she thought were Russians.

Later, when I was older, we would see a horror movie with the same sort of thing happening. The baby in the movie was born during a huge storm and as he was born there was lightening. His name was Damian, and he turned out to be the son of Satan. I assure you, we aren't brothers, although some in Emmett, Idaho have probably wondered about us from time to time. But I digress. Back to my dream...

I was nine years old. My brother and I went into town. We lived in a small town in Idaho called Emmett. It's somewhat isolated. It's 30 miles northwest of Boise, but in those days, 30 miles might as well have been another state over. We made it to Boise maybe once every two months. It was a big deal. Boise had around 70,000 people in it and was huge to us. Emmett only had around 3,000 people in it and we basically all knew each other, and each other's business.

My brother and I were always doing scientific experiments. We were sure that if we tried hard enough, we could invent something that would make the world a better place. So we went into Farber's Variety Store on Main Street. It was basically a 5-10 cent (damn, don't keyboards have the cent key anymore??!) store that had everything in it. We were fascinated at something new in the store that was the latest rave. It was an ant farm. We never did anything in moderation. We bought six of them! Each one was a complete kit. It included the ant farm, really fine sand, and the ants! You believe that? The ants even came with the kits. I don't remember how they kept them alive, but you never thought about things like that. We collected our kits and took them home.

We put the ants into their little containers, and we watched them start to make tunnels. I then started doing research on ants and found that in some ant communities, there were different "classes" of ant society. They seemed to be very ordered little creatures, with different individuals having different tasks to keep the society going. The ants we had were little tiny black things. We called them "piss ants" (don't ask my why - with so many other things in life during that era, it had no reason to it).

It was during my research of ants that I learned that many things have meaning to creatures, that we take for granted. For instance, scent is a big deal in much of the animal world. Eye contact in some species will say that you are making a challenge. If you don't believe me, go to a zoo and stare down a male leopard with an aggressive look. Just don't stand too close to the cage when you do it. Oh, and don't wear anything that doesn't wash well. You may have to put it through several washings to get the urine stains out. Coloring is another thing that can send clear signals to other species. A bright color can be a warning.

This is true with ants as well. I learned that different colorings could sometimes mean different aggressive behaviors in ants. For example, ants that were half black and half red were more aggressive than all black ants. And ants that were all red, were the most aggressive. This is not always the case, but in the ant species that we had access to in Emmett, it was the case. But alas, we just had little black "piss ants", and they were friendly to everyone. And, somewhat uninteresting. After a couple of weeks, we lost interest because they didn't do much. Everyone seemed to be pretty much equal and they went about their business.

We had the idea that it would be more interesting if we got the all red fire ants (we called them "war ants" - you have to remember, this was during the Cold War with Russia, and we were looking for a weapon that our country could use if we were invaded). This was no small feat. We knew of a fire ant colony a half mile from our home. Nothing went close to it and something instinctively told me to keep my distance as a kid, along with other animals. Nothing messed with them, until now. Of course, once we got there, I needed to test their aggression to make sure they were what we were looking for. I took a couple of them, and flicked them on my brother. They stung him, he started gasping for breath, and fell to the ground, saying, "I can't breathe!". I thought, "wow!", but then went back home to tell Mom that Mike needed medical attention. Once he was fixed up, he said, "They must have neurotoxin!!". We looked at each other and said, "WOW!". The test was a success. These ants had the aggressive nature required for our weapon testing. I suppose it's a good thing that cobras don't occur in Idaho.

We wrapped ourselves in saran wrap under our clothes to prevent ant stings (yes it was hot as hell), and went up to collect our ants. We collected thousands and ended up getting more ant farms for the ants. They were kept in our bedroom. We both slept in the same bedroom with our beds were separated by a divider. It had shelves on it and on each shelf was an ant farm. They built tunnels and each one had it's own little civilization. But then I got to thinking, for it to be complete, we need a queen to guide the colony. With much difficulty, we located a queen from the same colony. This was important. A queen from a different colony would have been rejected. So, one little ant farm was happy with their queen, but what about the other 15 farms that we had? They had no queen.

This is where the big breakthrough came. I came up with the world's first network! That's right! I had the idea that if we could some how connect the individual farms together, they could all function as one, and the queen would be in charge of all. We did this with soda straws, and a wood burner set. We would heat the hot iron of the wood burner, and melt a hole into each farm. We covered the hole with tape. When we got all the individual farms done, we started connecting each one to the other one with straws that connected to each hole in each farm. We did this slowly, so that the proper negotiations could take place. The ants had to recognize that the next farm introduced in the network was from the same colony so that everyone would "play nice". Eventually, they were all networked into this complex array of little farms making this huge ant metropolis. It was an beautiful thing. And, with these ants, you could definitely see the different hierarchy's of their work force.

All was well. We had a few bumps in the road. Mom kept harping at us that she didn't want insects in the house because the "freaked her out" and made her "uneasy". We assured her that we had containment and that all was well. Then one night, I woke up with a searing headache. It turned out that I had a red ant in my ear canal who was trying to dig a hole into my ear. Yes, it hurt like hell. Luckily he didn't sting me. When Mom looked in my ear, she place a cotton swab into my ear, and the ant crawled out on the swab. I told her, "Well, we have around 75,000 members of our ant community. Missing one of them was not so bad.

Then one day, it happened. Mike wanted me to play football with him. He would throw the ball to me, I would catch it. He would run back and I would throw it back to him. We were doing this in the house. Yes, we were told never to do that, but hell, we never listened. I remember it vividly. It was like it was all in slow motion. He threw the ball to me. I missed it. It was heading directly for the center colony in the ant metropolis that we created. I could stop it. The ball hit the center farm, and all of them fell. When they hit the floor, they fell apart. Suddenly, we had 75,000 pissed off red war ants looking for someone to kill!

Mom, came in after hearing the crash. My brother and I watched in horror, saying nothing. My Mom started to preach to us about why this is why she asked us not to play ball in the house. We both looked at her in horror. She stopped talking, seeing the look on our faces. We screamed at her at the same time, using the same words, "WE'VE LOST CONTAINMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". She didn't know what the hell that meant. She was doing laundry, after all. I started screaming, "Evacuate! Evacuate!". My brother and I started to running down the hallway to get out of the house. She dropped the laundry that was in her arms, and just stood there screaming. I yelled back to her from the end of the hallway, "If you want to LIVE, Evacuate NOW!!!". We all ran out of the house.

That was the end of the ant farm. We had to have the "county extension agent" (why would they call them that?) come out and fumigate the house. It took us forever to clean up our little dead ant soldiers.... very sad. It was a sad day for us, and our country that lost a powerful weapon.

A few weeks later, my brother came into our room and saw me reading a book. He asked what I was reading. I responded with a question, "Where can we get 'enriched uranium'?"