War is hell. Pt 1

There’s a war going on. I see it every day, in all aspects of life. Though at first, I didn’t know it, this war has been raging around me in everything I do.

I first became aware of the mayhem when I spotted a cockroach standing sentry underneath the dining room table. He was clearly standing guard over some cache of cockroach weaponry, but to what extend I didn’t quite get. Then, clear as daylight reflecting off of the spilling water on the kitchen counter – an ant colony. Or convoy. I’m still debating is a group of ants marching one after the other is a convoy, or merely a prisoner procession. I suppose if there were other creatures standing guard angrily and prodding them it’d for sure be a procession, but I have the feeling these ants were packing so they were most definitely a convoy. But there they were, marching circles around (figuratively, and actually in no way were they even in the same room as) the cockroach envoy. And like that (shameless Usual Suspects reference), it was clear to me.

The cockroaches and the ants? They were at war.

The cockroach envoy whom I at first thought to be guarding the underside of the dining room table remains there still, showing ever the diligence in waiting out not only time, elements, and the occasional dust ball, but also random roving spider patrols. The spiders it seemed, like mercenaries, held on to no clear sides but allocated assaults on either civilization depending on whom the highest bidder of the day was. And here’s how I learned this…

A day after noticing the initially placed guard under the table (whose cache I have yet to analyze partially based on my fear of his pending assault, and partially on my unwillingness to be caught observing said guard and having to clear him out of the area) I saw yet another cockroach warrior patrolling the walls of the kitchen. The upper walls. And from cinema alone (be gone evil Army training!) we all know that the high ground, is the…best? Sure. The bestest even.

So there he was, poised for flight or to signal his cockroach superiors to inform them that I’d acquire any number of items from the fridge (possibilities include liquor, beer, or beer and liquor at the same time) so that later they might raid my wares. Cockroaches, in case you hadn’t been aware, are mostly unable to steal into the stores of frigid airs, and must steal those treasures from the unwitting. So being a good journalist (lie) I stood by to observe. The roving patrol (yes, a real term) did what looked like a sideways “S” pattern around the walls until getting lost in the depths of “behind the fridge” no man’s land. But his movement intrigued me, so I ventured towards the living room and noticed another member of the C-clan. He was standing guard atop the entrance to the bathroom, a place I knew to be a stronghold of ant and spiders in arms. At that moment I had no true idea just how deep the lines were drawn between the two forces. But that was then, and this is now.