A Living Magazine - Day 11 - War and Cooperation

It was the usual wake-up, pack-up scenario. And, since finding the park, that's where I was headed to do all of my morning duties. I stopped into Chevron for a cup of coffee and heard the two clerks talking about a friend who had died. I asked them what they were discussing.

One of them told me that she lived next to a fellow employee (another 7 Eleven worker) who had also become a friend. The man kept to himself--was a bit of a loner. She only really spoke to him at work or when they ran into each other, rarely. Another neighbor said she had not seen him leave the house in 5 days. The police were called. The store clerk was there at the man's house when they arrived. She walked in with them, and there he was, dead on his couch with the TV on.

I said I was very sorry to hear that. She thanked me, and the two continued to talk about how the other neighbor should have checked in on him, etc... And that's about all I heard as I left. It made me think of the sleepy guy in the field for a moment, although that turned out OK. Then the moment was gone.

After freshening up, I took a short video of the park, which I realized was not Kennedy Park, as I had called it yesterday, but Fuller Park...

Fuller Park

With a couple hours before the library opened, I decided I'd get some breakfast. I had only eaten once the day before and was pretty hungry. Usually I try to skip breakfast. This is because I don't want to have to use a bathroom 20 hours later, while in my nest. Also, if I am only eating once or twice a day, it's better to eat in the afternoon. That way, I space the meals out and have more energy. 

I stopped in at the Nation's Giant Hamburgers, who serve breakfast as well. It was good. Friendly staff too. I met a very nice, but hyper woman named Janice, and her husband--who was a bit loopy from painkillers after breaking his arm. She said she used to work there at the restaurant and grew up in Napa. We talked for a little while and she mentioned that last year Napa had an earthquake in August. Now, the damage around town made a lot more sense. The Post Office was especially hard hit. I gave her a card and left for the library...

Earthquake Damage in Napa

As I walked to Coombs Street, I felt one of those sharp barbed grass seeds in my shoe, so I stopped and took off the shoe to remove it. While I was dislodging the little bastard, I saw something I've seen a million times and wanted to make a comment on. 

People - myself included - often believe that ants from the same colony scurry all over the place, randomly looking for food. This is far from the reality. If you're freaked out by having ants around, consider this... Ants do send out scouts to search for goodies, but these scouts lay down a different chemical scent depending upon whether they've found something or not.

Once a food item is discovered the ant will eat some of it and then leave a very distinctive pheromone on the way back to the colony, that other ants can trace back to the source. Once this little trail is established, a contingent of dutiful workers stream out to break it up and carry it back. 

Now, this highway is fascinating to watch. The more ants travel it, the more focused they become on finding the straightest and most efficient way back and forth. And, if you look carefully, you will see that every ant going to the source of the food touches the antennas of every ant returning. That is not an exaggeration. They may miss sometimes, but they REALLY try.

If you're worried about them running up your leg while you stand a foot away, don't. This is a reassuring thought when I'm out sleeping in the woods or field. I scan the area for ants. Usually there are a few around (scouts), or streams of them gorging on some unfortunate victim. They are not interested in me. As we saw a few days ago, they are very interested in the food (especially sugary drinks) that I might bring. I screwed up by falling asleep that other night and leaving my backpack open. That's why I had a bit of an ant snack when I tried to drink my mango juice.

I know all of this is boring to many people, but to someone traveling or camping, it is both reassuring and edifying to understand how animals behave. It eliminates fear. Knowledge is the antidote to fear. So here is a little video showing what I mean. Watch near the end as one of the ants accidentally flips over on its back, and another one comes by and flips it over...

After I recorded the above, I placed a rock in the middle of the stream of ants, and they were trhown into confusion. Some turned and went back either toward the food source, or the colony, while others investigated alternate routes around the rock. It took about 5 minutes for them to get a new system in place.

The organizational arrangement of insects is nearly perfect. It wasn't formed by intelligence, but slowly by collective experience, manifested out of millions of years of failure and success. The colony is ONE organism, controlling its separate parts by the equivalence of Wi-Fi (in chemical form). There are endless metaphors that can be made about this.

Humans, on the other hand, started out more like that and "evolved" to be more independent from the group needs. Humans should be given credit, with all of our personal liberties, to have voluntarily come back to to a greater group mentality.

We war against each other, just like colonies of ants, bees, wasps, etc., do. But when we do it, supposedly, we usually leave some of the other side alive because the majority of humanity has moral standards about genocides and such. But do recall that we also are likely to overdo the shock and awe part of warfare. Other animals do not do that. They kill to survive. We kill for ideologies--telling ourselves it is for survival, and then we torture, rape and leave a burnt earth behind.

The propaganda is that this extra measure of cruelty will be a deterrent against future attacks by the "other side." But it doesn't work. Still we do it. The reason isn't that we are stupid (at least not in that way) and can't learn about our failures well-enough to not repeat them. Rather, it is because some of us have an insane lust for hurting our enemies--not just killing them. Insanity, as we all know, is not stupidity. It is the repetition of behaviors that never succeed in bringing us what we SAY we are seeking to achieve. In our case, there is a measure of enjoyment mixed in. Our ability to love unconditionally, has come with a capacity to be astonishingly vicious. I believe this will be weighted toward the love side eventually. Again, just a matter of will and the repetition of positivity.

I worked at the library for several hours, while arranging to go to Sacramento the next day, and then headed back to my field via a circuitous route by the Vine Transit Station, so that I'd know how to get to it.

When I finally arrived at the nesting place, passing the sleepy guy, I quickly laid things out and laid there thinking for several hours, falling asleep around 12:30 am. At 4:14 I heard a CRACKKK! Lightning.

By instinct alone, I was up and packed within 5 minutes. I was not going to have a downpour catch me off guard...