The arthropod that broke the camel's back

This week, I felt a bit weighed down. I was carrying grief and anxiety and physical pain. I was managing; bowed but not broken.

And then the ants arrived.

They marched their tiny feet right under the back door and across my kitchen floor. Armed with glass cleaner I fought valiantly, winning many skirmishes. But they were unstoppable. And as my glass cleaner spray bottle got closer and closer to empty, I broke down in tears, seated on the same kitchen floor that was the site of nearly every battle (we also came to conflict in the dining room).

I have since laid out chemical weapons (Terro ant bait) that kill them slowly enough that they take the poison back to their hidden bunkers and war rooms. (The dog seems to like the taste of the ant bait, so the battlefield is cordoned off with babygates and closed doors.)

I have mostly recovered from the frustrated puddle of earlier in the week, but this sketchy illustration (because it is a sketch, not because it is of an unsavory individual. Though that is also true) was my way of acknowleding the moment.

We brace for the big things and manage to carry them, and then the little indignities -- sometimes truly tiny ones -- take us down.

Take care of yourselves, friends. The ants are coming for us, and they are wily.

(With apologies to any entomologists reading this -- both for the ways in which I surely misrepresented the tetremorium immigrans in my rendering of them, and for the body count for which I am responsible in the war for the kitchen floor. I'm sorry you had to read about it. I am not sorry for killing them.)

This image was created with a Sakura Pigma micron pen with an 05 tip. My signature is with a 01 tip pen. I used no underdrawing, working directly on the page of my sketchbook (hence the misspelling in the latin name). My reference image was found on the internet on a pest control site. It appears to have been an etching from a biology text, and did not include the three legs on the other side of the ant's body.