Get Set

April 20, 2011
Been on land too long. One knows when it is time to do something else. For us, the time is approaching to do just that: something else. Go with me on this. I caught myself wondering around in our drought stricken former yard thinking this may be the year when the old lawn mower will not be used. Fact is that there is no grass in the yard and chances are that no weeds will grow either. Now that may not be all bad. At least the yard will not be an eyesore. Folks in West Texas, including the State Disaster guru are saying that the only break to this drought, and the huge firestorm out west, will be a tropical storm. WHAT? How’s that for mixed feelings? Ok, so it is Texas dry and we are going for a 100 year record low rain fall while the East Coast is being hammered by rain and storms. So, we have just a few more days to enjoy the yard entertainment. What entertainment? Well, like the Willie Nelson song, I discovered that there are things popping in the yard, down on my knees watching critters. I noticed a line of very small, very fast, almost stealthy and somewhat cute red ants all in two lines opposing each other. They were confining their “freeway” to just a one inch wide zone on the driveway making their way to and from cracks in same. The West bound ants were laden with little ant babies and the East bound ones were without loads returning to the ant baby nursery somewhere under our driveway. Now what is intriguing, besides the fact that an auld dawg like me is watching the parade, is that it occurred to me that they have their own form of one heck of a traffic jam. Yup, that’s right, a jam of Biblical proportions. Their little freeway has no center stripe thus there should be collisions, but there were none to be seen. There are millions of them with some kind of strict marching orders and they are flat out, pedal to the metal with no collisions. We could all learn something from them. They pass at distances less than feeler (and we are talking little tiny feelers) length and do not collide. We get nervous when we encounter a Carnival Cruise Liner at 10 miles distant in the dark. What’s with that? I think I will pull up a chair and watch those “masters of traffic” some more---- or not. Gotta get back to sea soon.