Making peace

Like any cultured American, I have spent time overseas. In 2007, I lived in a quaint town in northern Thailand, on the non-touristy, local student side. I lived like a real Thai. I rented a small house in the forest suburbs of the city, sandwiched between a nature reserve and a sprawling Buddhist temple, with Thai neighbors with a yappy, insomniac, heavy-breathing dog that would walk back and forth outside my window next to my bed in the early hours of the morning, back and forth, back and forth, breathing in and out, in and out. It looked as though I would have the good life in Thailand. Or so I thought.... I quickly learned that as picturesque as Thailand was from afar, it was a wholly different story close up.

Life was different there. New challenges met me every day; I had to buy my own potable water, learn to drive a motorbike, avoid getting caught in monsoon downpours on my 40 minute commute home, and try to look cool in a rain poncho. Life was more difficult than I had anticipated. But the biggest, most frightening, hair-raising challenge of all ended up being right under my nose. My new forest home appeared to be infested with approximately 14 BILLION ANTS. They streamed across the bathroom walls, marched through the kitchen, blocked pathways to toilets and sinks, taunted me above my bed at night threatening to shower down on me should a gust of wind pass through my room.

Two questions wracked my brain: 1. What were the owners of this house thinking?! and 2. How do I immediately rid my house of each and every one of these ants? I was not saying they had to die, I just didn’t want to live with them. It was nothing personal. We are just two different species; I live inside and they live outside. It’s only civilized.

I would be living in that house for three months, and during those three months, I vowed to make it my duty, my purpose, my sole obligation to defeat those ants. After all, how difficult could it be?! Clearly the Thai homeowners had just not tried to do this before. Maybe the owners were lazy and unmotivated. Maybe they didn’t know how disgusting their lives had been since they had never known anything else. You can’t blame them for ignorance. But it was a good thing I was there, because I could show them how ant extermination was done. Easy as fucking apple pie with an American flag and a walk on the moon on top. When they got back to their home, they’d think, “wow this is so pleasant! I didn’t notice before, but how could we ever have lived like that?! This is so much better. We’ll never ever go back to our old, filthy ways. Khap khun kha!”

Now I am nothing if not a respectful visitor in other people’s homes. So, out of the utmost deference for Thai culture, I first looked for an environmentally-friendly way to shoo these animals outside. However, I quickly learned that if Thais wanted Americans to adapt to their ways, they would have created more products with English writing on them. But since they had not, I instead purchased a small green box, whose diagrams made it look like ants would crawl through the party machine, eat the poison inside of it, go outside the house, bring the poison to their friends, and DIE OUTSIDE. Victory was mine. I could feel it coming. I would show these animals who was boss, and those who weren’t killed would see the example made by their slain relatives and get the hell out of my house.

It was so easy. Such a flawless plan.

ATTEMPT #1

The following morning, I placed the green box of glory right in one of the long columns of ants. They began walking around it.... nooo! no no no! I readjusted the box and encouraged them inside. Heeere, anty anty anty, look at that deliciousness inside of the secret box. Mmmmm yum yum yum. Just crawl through the box, eat some snacks, and then you can go on your way. Consider this my thank you for welcoming me to the neighborhood with so many open arms. Just like the native Americans did with the Europeans.

Step one: complete. I hopped on my motorbike and drove off to work. You kids have a good day, and I’ll see you laaaaterr.... On my drive to work, I thought about my approaching success. Soon there would be no ants in my bathroom. It would be so clean, so empty after they all fled outside to die in nature. No one watching me while I peed. I could wash my face without contact lenses in and not fear getting a fistful of insects when turning on the faucet. No one glaring over me while I slept. No one attacking any food I left out for more than 15 seconds. The possibilities seemed endless.

Later that evening, I was giddy with excitement to return home. But what was waiting for me was so much worse than anything I could have ever imagined. There was a massacre of ants inside my bathroom. It was like the Srebrenica of northern Thailand. The sink was full of them, the walls and floors and ceiling were coated with them, they were in the shower, the toilet, the corners, the crevices between shampoo bottles, inside my soap dish, under the toilet seat. There were carcasses of dead ants everywhere. Where did I go wrong?! My perfect plan had backfired!!

The ants were supposed to go OUTSIDE, to THEIR HOME to DIE. Why did they die inside??!! And that’s when I realized: this was their home. My home was their home just as much as outside the thin, holey walls. It was ALL THEIR HOME. We were housemates. What was I thinking, they’d go back to their home and die?!

Tears streaming down my face, I shoved ants down the shower drain, which coincidentally led directly outside into my backyard through a 7 inch tube. I flushed them down the toilet. I threw piles of ants in the garbage. Why was life so difficult?! I vowed to those ants still alive: you haven’t seen the last of me....

ATTEMPT #2

I knew what I had to do. My next approach would be to outsmart the ants, obviously. If they thought my house was their home, I would trick them into thinking the outside was their home. Then, they would go outside to die. I put the small green box outside the house. I prayed for a clean, swift, mass murder.

I finished a long day at work and again, drove home on my motorbike. And again, I was met by yet another, deadly massacre, entirely inside my bathroom.

ATTEMPT #3

I WILL NOT BE BROKEN. YOU WILL NOT BEAT ME, THAILAND.

I bought Raid, written in goddamn stars and stripes American English. I had had it with the “natural world” bullshit. I paid rent and that was MY space. If those ants thought the bathroom was their home, then fine, they could have home court advantage. But I would prevail.

I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed until I nearly asphyxiated myself. I slammed the bathroom door closed, coughing and gasping for air, and crawled my way to the front door. I drove away on my motorbike, wary of what I’d come home to find...

ADMIT DEFEAT/ REACH ENLIGHTENMENT

More dead ants. Thousands of dead ants. They were everywhere. When would it end?! There seemed to be an endless supply of ants. My house must be some sort of ant community center for the region. A VFW maybe? All of the ants in the neighborhood must live in my house or at least pass through in typical day. It was hopeless.

And maybe--just maybe--it wasn’t even the ants who had to change, but me who had to change. After three days of deadly battle, near asphyxiation, and many tears shed, I finally realized that there was no such thing as “indoors,” as “my space” or “your space.” I resigned myself to having roommates that summer. The ants still streamed across my bedroom walls at night. I learned to take pleasure in watching slugs and lizards mate in my sink and on my window screens. I chatted with the foot long gecko who occasionally hung out on the wall, under the Buddhist altar. I realized that I couldn’t win the battle and I certainly couldn’t win the war. Besides, what would higher walls or non-porous borders do at the end of the day, anyway? Was there a reason we couldn’t all live together? Were we really that different?

WORLD PEACE