almost a prequel but not

I was thinking it was a bit of a hike for that carpenter ant to walk all the way from the lawn, up the table leg, around the table top and then around my coffee mug, all for nothing because to the best of my knowledge carpenter ants don’t have any use for metal lawn furniture or columbian coffee with cream and sugar and I would most likely know because that’s the kind of trivia that gathers in the crooks of my brain.

I was wondering why he made the journey when one of his compatriots bounced off my arm and onto the table. He had fallen from the pear tree. The pear tree that is mostly dead and that has yet to sprout any hint of a pear in the years I have lived in this house.

This new ant caused me more concern than his caffeinated friend because I don’t like bugs falling on me, I don’t like carpenter ants in the trees in my yard and it also made me wonder what else could have fallen into my coffee mug from the tree because my arm was rather close to the mug when it happened. I was reading a book, while drinking my coffee, while sitting in my back yard so my attention wasn’t focused on what could or could not be in the mug.

I looked over my left shoulder at the pitiful tree as if I were looking for some divine revelation as to what to do but no revelation was revealed so I went back to reading my book. And as I read each word in order, I got a little more angry at those two ants. One ant ruined my coffee and the other had me worrying about when that pear tree will finally fall, hopefully, uneventfully into some blank void in my yard.

I closed my book and dumped the coffee that remained and went back inside.

damn ants.