LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 7/22/08
THE ANTS ARE COMING
I have lived in Utah for the past 20 years and have never had to worry about ants, unlike in my former California home, where ants were an ungodly plague. If the kitchen in that San Fernando home had even a speck of food left anywhere, there would soon be three solid trails of ants; one coming, one going, one circling the edges of the kitchen or veering off course to navigate up your leg. They were horrible. It was wonderful not to have them anywhere near my Utah home.
I live in a suburb of Salt Lake City. When I first moved here, it was somewhat rural, with small livestock farms, much open space and many weedy, vacant lots. But the open space got filled in with homes, as many homes as could be fit onto the parcel of land purchased by the developer. Then came the stores; strips of five or six shops. Then the streets were widened.
A few years ago I noticed that the butterflies were gone. The many majestic yellow and black monarchs that always lazily sailed the air currents in my back yard and the fluttery blue ones whose name I didn't know; they had disappeared. Then suddenly the dragonflies were gone. Those helicopters of the insect world stopped hovering over my vegetable garden. I missed their daily show, their iridescent wing flash as they zipped among the plants.
Then, a few days ago, two blocks away from my neighborhood, I saw the anthill .
It was a large anthill, with many strings of black ants moving towards the fairly new block of townhomes. It was easy to see had happened. The large dry dusty lot that had acted like a hostile desert barrier against crawling insects was now filled with homes, each of which had juicy landscaping that was regularly watered. The homes had big cans into which ever-fresh garbage was regularly placed, a constant banquet for ants. There was no longer that big block of hardpacked dry dirt to keep them away from the feast. The officials had given the developers permission to change the micro-environment.
Many people think of the environment as this huge, unified thing, but that's not the case. Any gardener can tell you about micro-environments; the part of the garden too shady for tomatoes because the neighbor's trees cut off the sun, the garden patch where everything planted grows well, the place where nothing ever grows right for some strange reason.
Micro-environments change. Maybe the neighbor's trees weren't tall enough to cut off the sun a few years ago. Maybe the fertile section of the garden was once part of a cattle ranch, constantly covered with manure compost that still fertilizes plants decades later. The grass planted beside the newly widened street is smothered by the residue of burned petroleum, replaced by weeds whose seeds were tracked in by cars, and they grew unchecked and re-seeded and now there is a new annoying weed appearing in lawns and gardens in the neighborhood.
The environment, or that vast area that most people mean when they think of the environment, slowly changes on a big scale because we don't pay attention to faster changes on a small scale. Did any of my neighbors notice that there were no more monarchs in the neighborhood, or wonder whether the expanded shopping strip and new homes took away so much greenery that the area was no longer hospitable for butterflies?
The concept of global warming accompanies the word 'environment' like hip accompanies hop. But while global warming is a huge issue, it's outside of any individual's sphere. Nothing you can do will affect it. Meanwhile, it might be good to look at the environment with a close up view. Is the air of your local environment rich with oxygen because of all the trees in that woody area half a mile away? What will the effect be from cutting down those trees and replacing them with the impervious walls of a big box store?
And how much will our awareness be changed if we learn about the micro-environment in which we each live, learn about the plantlife and insects and what affects them, how human actions affect them, if we look at a developer's plan not just in terms of human density, but in terms of its effect on the immediate environment.
I figure it will take about two years for the ants to make new nests and build out as they reproduce in the now more favorable environment, until they finally get to my neighborhood and eventually, my home. Then I will have to buy poison spray, which will make an unwanted micro-change in my micro-environment, and I will have the extra work of meticulously keeping every speck of food constantly wiped up.
In the meantime, I will enjoy my ant-free house and yard and wonder what other changes there will be in my little back yard garden because two miles away, a company is building 1,200 new homes.
Wina Sturgeon, Editor