Epic Endeavour

As my mother asked me to take the dry towel, that had been wet for sometime, that was dry now, off the clothesline, i ended not only taking the towel off the clothesline but also disturbing the smooth file of ants that were shuttling between two mysterious destinations en route the clothesline. For a moment i did not know what to do as i stood transfixed thinking about the onslaught that i would trigger did i disturb their smooth passage. My mother got frustrated at the slackness of my pace at the duty rather dutifully entrusted on my hands from her. She began worrying about my diligence at working out errands. I stood before her as dunce who was incapable of performing a task that would be easy even for a moron.

What made me stood bamboozled was the kind of disaster that would befall on those ants that were traveling on the towel at that time. If i took off the towel, then they would end up as refugees on some unknown territory, finding themselves completely alienated from their colony. I thought about their decimation for a while and even thought about their possible reunion though in the end i ended up disturbing their union. I took the towel off and shirked it rather violently to shed the possible ants that were clinging on to the towel, i did not know how could have i taken the towel off lest disturbing the smooth march of them. It was impossible to stop the oncoming ant to step on to the towel off the clothesline and to speed up the one that was already on its course on the towel.

After ruining their smooth passage, i decided to find out where they were heading using the clothesline as a cantilever bridge. The journey of them started from a teeny-weeny chink in the wood window frame of the window of the kitchen wall, from where the one end of the clothesline began, to another of the teeny-weeny chinks of yet another wood window frame of another window of the dining hall wall, where it ended. On a closer examination i found them transporting chunks of food and chunks of eggs, quite wary of the oncoming monsoon. I did not know the difference between the abodes of these two colonies of them. There would have been differences between the two tunnels that they had built into the wood window frame. I also found out that the detour on the clothesline had saved thousands of miles on the part of the ants to travel. They would embark on an arduous journey crossing water-bodies of the sizes of puddles, lakes and mounds as big as the Himalayas were there no clothesline. I was awestruck at the level of their intelligence as they found a wonderful short-cut to take them safe, quick and in exhaustive. As the clothesline arrived at that spot only a fortnight ago as my mother thought of drying up the clothes under some shade, an act of ingenuity on her part, during the monsoon season. It showed the adaptability of them to the changing ambiance. I felt sorry for those who were stranded off the course by my callous act. I have not obtained any knowledge so far whether they made up their journey to reach their colonies.