It’s the Ant’s Land Now

The Bluebells flowered last week, shortly after being planted in the end of a bed of broccoli and beans. I was so elated to see the little blue flowers. I adore blossoms.

The reality that a flower is the sex parts of a plant comforts me deeply. Sex can beauty and showy. Sex is natural. I need all the examples of luxury, color, fragrance, and sensual pleasure I can get. White people and men have made life hell on earth with capitalism, patriarchy and racism. I have been overwhelmed for years, but it is always the land, the flowers, the pollinators that are the grounding medicine for me.

Sex is nature.

Colonization is not.

Flowers do not create systems of oppression. They open and attract and fruit. What a way to live. Just being. And your being is ironically beautiful, unique, eye-catching, nourishing. Flowers have it figured out. This is why I planted them, it’s why I love them.

A less loved relative exists on the land, the Fire Ant. Yesterday I came out to water and weed. If I remember to stretch and warm up my body, I do that first, but I usually forget this step and go straight in to my observation walk around the gardens. I checked on the Bluebells. It’s been cold, following a number of hot days, so I was expecting the blossoms to have dropped.

The plants have gotten bigger, the flowers were gone, more to come I’m sure. Then I saw one plant flopped over, it’s vascular parts on the sandy soil of the bed. The very top of the root was exposed. I went to lift the plant back up and hill the soil around it.

Ants swarmed immediately. I see. These masterful terraformers were landscaping by way of removing this Bluebell. Pushing it out of the soil. I watched them, my gentle touch and lift of the flower’s leaves was transgression enough. About ten ants came out of the hole surrounding the root.

I wasn’t bitten because I moved my hand, and as I crouched watching them scan the area for potential threat, I accepted what was happening.

The Fire Ant has no natural predators in so-called North America. They are an incredible teacher for survival. Traveling across the continent by floating off with flood waters, dominating areas (like the farm) with enormous and multiple nests, and as their namesake implies their incredible defense mechanism. That bite.

I admire the ants. Their swiftness with protecting their hills, building their nests, and changing the landscape for their benefit is incredible; not convenient for my growing plans. Last year, I planted over 200 square feet of sorghum by hand, unknowingly offering a sweet and nutritious buffet for the ants with the seed. I saw ten sorghum plants reach maturity by the end of the summer.

I admire the ants because they are modeling how to make a way and not really by force. They are very serious protectors of their home, but I do not consider defense unwarranted aggression. I wish I had that natural instinct for myself, but it has been trained out of me. As an adult I’m still very much in the early stages of learning the power of my bite. My learned mode of defense has been fawn or flight.

The ants also model community so powerfully.

I’ll bite the shit out of you till my sisters come and bite you too, even if it’s just the tiniest scrap of skin on your pinky toe, I’m going to get your ass.

An ant literally said that to me as I watched her body lift as she pinced my bare toe. I stood between lettuce and snap peas feeling the sharp, hot pain of her bite, before I knew she was there. I am not afraid of the ants, I try to mind my p’s and q’s and toes, even while barefoot, and I have accepted their presence.

I also think of how they fuck up my plans and plants. Just because something is good at surviving, doesn’t mean it’s beneficial. Colonists and my oppressors have survived, they are infact the majority in this imperial project that is the country of the USA. What is the cost of their presences for all of us. Me, the Fire Ant, our relatives in Sudan, Congo, Gaza?

This isn’t a just a big metaphor. I accepted that the ants are hear and like most “invasives” they are not going to be easy to remove. I also accepted that they pushed out my Bluebell yesterday because I have accepted that I will be leaving this land.

I don’t think of the Fire Ant as a pest. Thought they’ve hurt me and I’m pretty sure decimated the native ant populations. I haven’t seen a little black ant in ages. I think of the Fire Ants as result of colonization and the destruction of strong environments.

The Harriet Tubman Freedom Farm is on the site of a former plantation. The descendants of the those plantation owners have proven to be more pest than neighbor. Petty, racist, and plotting.

Racist, cowards who weaponize colonial power hoarding tactics are far more dangerous to me than a Fire Ant hill. Who is the invader actually? I relate to the Fire Ant more than the humans who surround the land I cultivate. The Fire Ants didn’t vote for a serial rapist, they don’t use exploitative migrant labor, they don’t worship a colonial, white supremacist empire. The Fire Ants forage for food, protect their homes, and rear babies.

Every Black farmer, even if they do not acknowledge it, is affected by the specter of slavery in the capitalism and the food system. The way we are targeted, the setbacks and barriers in acquiring capital, the dangers of trying to maintain capital, and the stress of working in an industry built on our dehumanization and destruction- none of the violence has stopped and it isn’t improving.

There are Fire Ant hills everywhere on the land. In my tracking, I’ve seen a trend of a Fire Ant hill every four steps. That’s a lot of ants. They didn’t arrive here on the May flower they were able to travel because of the degradation of native habitats across the land. Many of which were obliterated because of the annihilation of the Indigenous people and plantation farming methods.

How is a colonizer different from an invasive species? One thing I think about is the pattern of colonizers bringing the “invasive” species somewhere it was not from. Fault. Responsibility. These are the differences. I don’t blame the Fire Ants for continuing to move and adapt.

What conditions were created across so-called Latin America that caused the ant to wind up here?

There are a number of plants on the land that some white guy brought from Asia, and they are prolific. Spreading underground through rhizomes that I can never remove every inch of. The concept of invasive species is a euphemism for the symptoms of colonial violence that is the actual invaders doing whatever they want to people (human and nonhuman) because they have no regard for life.

I am excited to part from these ants. I wonder how I will manage and or prevent them at the next place I go. You have been an incredible teacher Fire Ants, and fuck y’all I want to see my Bluebells flourishing.