CAT FIGHT

It’s February 13th, the sun is shining, first time it seems in quite awhile. Standing by the kitchen sink looking out the window at the backyard bird feeders I notice, on the window, a flying ant. It’s a quite ordinary ant, a black ant, and I think to myself the fact that it has wings that it may been a mated queen from last fall. Perhaps, it somehow flew into the house and settled in some space around the window to wait for spring, and now that the sun has warmed the area it’s woken from its hibernation, and is looking to get out and start a colony. It doesn’t realize just how cold it is outside and that the 3 feet of white stuff covering the ground is snow. I have a choice now, kill it, or ignore it, and it may find its way back into a crevice and wait out the balance of the winter. I chose to ignore it.

February 16th, the ant is flying about and crawling on the sliding door leading to the rear deck. What to do? Left where it is it will no doubt eventually starve to death. I could catch it and let it go outside. The outside temperature is close to 0C. It might survive and find shelter? I catch it with a water glass, place one hand over the top so that it won’t fly away, and open the sliding door. I remove my hand. The ant flies out the door is hit by a blast of cold air, and drops dead onto the deck. I feel badly.

On February 14th a deranged teen in Florida goes to school with an automatic assault rifle, pulls the fire alarm, then proceeds to massacre 17 persons as they file from their classrooms. Sadly, it was commonly known that the teenager was mentally unbalanced, but no one acted on this information. Had they, seventeen persons would have celebrated Valentine’s Day, a day set aside for love. I feel badly.

On February 17th the day begins promising with the sun shining, and then slowly descends into cloud and snow flurries. Drinking my second cup of coffee I think of the ant and the massacre in Florida, and wonder about involvement, or the lack thereof, and the consequences of our actions. Would the ant have survived if I’d left well enough alone, and if it had survived what of its future? Would it have become a pest, or a cog in the very nature of things. Had the deranged teen been intercepted would he have been helped, gone on to live a decent life? And, what of the persons he gunned down? How will their loss affect our world? We may have lost a cure for cancer, or the answer to perpetual motion?

I remember, a long time ago, my mother-in-law attempting to break up a cat fight. Sticking her hand where she shouldn’t have resulted in her own cat badly scratching and biting her resulting in hospital visits, a round of antibiotics, and scars for life. As for the family cat, an evil creature called Ming, it licked its wounds and went off to fight another day.

What I’m trying to get at here, is whether we should get involved not having thought through the result of our actions, or lack thereof. Seems to me that we’re always kicking a hornet’s nest, rather than thinking things through, and working to fix our own problems. Sectarian, religious, warfare has been raging in the Middle East for centuries. Does anyone really believe that intervention is going to solve age old religious hatreds. Perhaps, we should step away and look closer to home and solve our own problems, let the hornet’s nest(s) alone. Of course, then, we might just discover that "we are the problem".

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Philosophical thoughts finished for the day it's time to get back to writing my art book, of which I should, or would, point out that there are few these days due to the excessive costs to produce. The following are a couple of field sketches, ink and watercolour, that led to a painting. All will take up pages in my forthcoming publication. Enjoy!

Spruce Island   Algonquin Park   Pen & Ink Field Sketch

Spruce Island   Algonquin Park   Watercolour Painting

Spruce Island  Algonquin Park   Watercolour Field Sketch