Notes from a Summer Cottage

by Nina Burton

  To rid myself of the caravan crossing the kitchen, I poured sugar into a bowl and set it far from the cottage. I did not wish to share the kitchen with ants, even if they were cleanly. The fact that the bowl later disappeared under mysterious circumstances is another story, and cannot be directly blamed on the ants.

  Why didn’t I have the same warm feelings for ants as I did for bumblebees? They’re both descended from the same insect-eating wasp, although that ancestor gave rise to offspring with very different life paths. While the bees have tested out various constellations of life, ants have kept strictly to a communal life on the ground, with some rather ascetic traits. Where bumblebees move like squirrels in the trees, ants live like naked mole-rats in underground colonies.

  Living underground provides excellent protection. But the most prominent explanation for the success of ants is their large number and their cohesion. The more ants there are, the more successful they become. Today there are fourteen thousand known species, and surely just as many still unknown. Each species has its own style of nest, allowing them to adapt to various environments, which in turn has allowed ants to establish themselves in every temperate corner of the Earth. Altogether, there are more ants than there are seconds that have passed since the Big Bang.

  While bees are under threat, there doesn’t seem to be any danger for ants. On the internet, I had mostly found them under the heading ‘pest control’. Gentler sites advised me that they dislike cinnamon, pepper, garlic and bicarbonate of soda; sprinkling these across their path will stop them just like a barrier. Perhaps I should try that in my kitchen. A more radical solution was to put out pest-control traps, which contain a yummy poison that the altruistic ants would naively carry to their queen. When she ate it she would die, and without her the entire ant society would automatically collapse. I made note of this in case the ants became too troublesome.

  There was something irritatingly familiar about their expansion. Was it that they seemed to mirror our own spread and increasingly urban lifestyle? Whereas bees live in a rural, small-scale sort of way, the ants’ settlements seem like big cities. In relation to their size, their cities can even be larger than London and New York. I couldn’t see the extent of their underground constructions on the property, but I must have had tens of thousands of lives under my feet.

  Their structured, earthbound existence is full of energy, so I knew there must be ants dashing this way and that in a multi-level nest packed with storage rooms, paths, warehouses and dormitories. The nursery of eggs and pupae must be on the top floor, since they needed more warmth. But no ants like the cold, so after their winter torpor they typically shuffle one by one into the spring sunshine to thaw their frozen joints. At the same time, they bring a little warmth back to the nest, and now all of them were on their feet, ready to colonise more land.

  In fact, they show some similarities to bees when it’s time to establish a satellite community. Ants, too, send out scouts to locate possible sites, and once they’ve laid scent trails they compare all the different suggestions. It was unclear to me how exactly this happened, but it hinted at a democratic society.

  Which new areas of the property they had set their sights on was obvious. One was the area surrounding the septic tank. When I lifted its wooden hatch, ants carrying eggs and pupae swarmed around the tank. Both the hatch and the frame around it needed a coat of linseed oil, so I stood there for a moment, pondering how to solve this problem. The ants, however, wasted no time. They immediately began to carry the eggs and pupae away in caravans to get them out of the bright light, and in working together they did in fact manage to lift the entire nursery to the top of the wooden frame and push it all inside. Within half an hour, the area was ant-free.

  That was an easy solution. Relieved, I replaced the lid. But the next time I lifted it the ants had taken over the entire area again. Pupae and eggs were neatly arranged back in their old spots, until the light streamed in. Then they repeated the same procedure as last time.

  Their keen organisation was impressive, almost as if they were each a small part of one big organism. And then it struck me that those two words were related. An organism is a system that can organise itself, all on its own.

  My appreciation for the ants’ organisation took a blow when I discovered that they had also invaded the writing nook. I didn’t discover this right away, since it was in an out-of-the-way corner, but there was a developing ant path, a constant trickle from ceiling to floor. From a distance it looked like Chinese characters, although I suppose any alphabet can be likened to tiny curlicues on their way to creating greater meaning. I have no aspirations to master all languages, but I was quite annoyed at my inability to interpret the ants’ message in the very writing nook where I wished to engage with language. It was no help that I had come to form some understanding of the bees’ dance, for ants have their own systems of communication.

  What were they doing in this little outbuilding? It certainly seemed like they were merely following one another. Maybe it provided a sense of comfort for near-sighted creatures who can only see a few centimetres ahead and are better at making out movements than shapes. Ants are, however, capable of navigating on their own. Since their muscles remember how they’ve moved from one place to the next, they can always find their way home using the position of the sun. And they can mark their path with pheromones, the scent substance produced by their glands.

  All organisms have pheromones, and, as we have seen, bees use them to call for help or give encouragement. But in the case of ants, these chemicals seem to have developed into a system something like a language. Since each pheromone has a particular effect, they can be combined to relate even more kinds of meaning, and when they are released at certain intervals it’s rather like Morse code. One ant researcher, who deciphered upwards of twenty pheromone-words, even suspected there might be a type of syntax or sentence structure.

  What’s more, the simple messages of pheromones can have different tenses or levels of intensity based on the time that has passed since they were emitted. A few are quick calls that vanish rapidly, but others are long-lived orientation trails, and these are especially refined. Ants returning from a discovery only leave scent trails if they’re carrying something. No scent trail indicates that there’s nothing more to gather.

  Context and strength can also add meaning to pheromones. A warning signal near the nest provokes aggression, but released further away it becomes an exhortation to flee. A faint signal is a request for additional workers, but a strong signal functions as an attack alarm. If the molecular structure is adjusted, the resulting messages can become secret codes that are only understood within that particular colony.

  What’s more, the pheromone language can be combined with sound and movement. Some ants can make a creaking sound by rubbing a ridged section of their abdomen; others can shake rhythmically; still others can click their jaws or mandibles. To emphasise something they can gently strike other ants with their antennae, and if the nest is attacked they can easily raise the alarm by banging their heads against something with resonance.

  And it’s not just that these various signals are broadcast – the way other ants receive them is also quite sophisticated. Pheromones are captured by the antennae, each section of which interprets different scents. One perceives the scent of home and another is for reading scent trails. A third section can tell the age of other ants, while a fourth is tuned in to the aroma of the queen – the one who gives the ant colony its identity. Home, novel paths, the character of fellow ants and an ant’s own identity – all of these ring out at once, like a chord.

  Like bees, ants use their antennae for both smell and touch. Together they create a nearly three-dimensional picture, like a landscape in relief, made of long or short, tightly packed or loosely spaced shapes. This is crucial, since ants move through a terrain that is like one big odour map. It’s full of the smells of different bacteria and fungi, of in
sects that might be predator or prey. They can also orient themselves using sight. For instance, researchers have noticed how an older ant, accompanying a younger one, stops here and there along the way to let her inexperienced sister find landmarks such as small pine buds or the shadow underneath a bush.

  The clouds of pheromones surrounding ants are not merely lightweight speech bubbles, so perhaps there was an important exchange of information going on right next to me. Surely the ants would describe this place much differently to how I was used to – after all, the senses can give rise to an entire way of viewing the world. As my eyes followed the caravan of ants up the wall, it struck me how much of my own language is determined by sight and hearing. It’s built upon visual symbols and audible sounds but can only capture feeling, taste and smell with the help of fumbling associations. Perfumes are characterised through images of alluring, elegant or fresh-faced women, and wines are described through laboured comparisons to everything from sharpened pencils to stables.

  Ants have it easier. They can make out just as many aromas as we have in our perfumes and wines, and since they don’t need to go the roundabout way through words, they can be more exact about it. When I compared my alphabet with the pheromone language of ants, in fact, my own seemed rather fabricated and abstract – which of course it is.

  So there I sat beside a complex language of the senses, feeling left out. Perhaps a few discreet vibration signals had even reached the ants’ forelegs? Indeed, they have a type of hearing organ near their knees. I thought of Evelyn Glennie, the deaf virtuoso percussionist who plays concerts barefoot to capture the sound waves through her feet. I myself, naturally, couldn’t feel a thing.

  Perhaps taste was another driving factor in the caravan on the wall. Ants greet each other mouth-to-mouth so that they can simultaneously share the food in their crops and information about what they’ve found. It seemed wrong to me to call this generous mouth greeting ‘regurgitation’. Instead, I associated it with the origin of a kiss. According to one theory, kissing developed out of the mothering habit of feeding pre-chewed food to babies mouth-to-mouth, and only later became an intimate gesture. Whatever the case, the ants’ mouth greeting is both a way to share and a messaging system. In some ants, it has contracted into one physical act: an individual ant shares a message about a food discovery by rocking back and forth with its jaws open, as if to share food.

  Wasn’t it rather touching that their way of greeting was just like feeding a baby? Didn’t that say something about how they took care of each other? Sometimes they even try to care for a friend after its death, until they smell the odour of rotting. At that point, the dead ant is rushed away to a waste storage area on the outskirts of the colony. One researcher transferred the corpse odour to living ants and found that they too were quickly carried off, even though they put up lively resistance. The odour meant death, and that was that – for in the world of the ants, scents convey the truth.

  Yet they can consciously use their pheromone language to deceive. Just like humans, ants can lie. Cunning ants can, for instance, sneak into other nests and signal, ‘Out, attack!’ Then when the nest is empty, the traitors are free to come in and steal larvae, which they raise to be slaves.

  Lies are a foul but sophisticated way to use a language – they indicate that the liar can anticipate the reactions of others and in doing so, manipulate those others. Even those who lie for egotistical reasons have moved outside their own sphere of thinking. Lies are evidence, then, that ants can understand how other individuals think.

  The more I thought about the elementary language of ants, the more clearly I could see its many-faceted nature. It can give guidance or warning; it can provide information about food or show solidarity; it can understand environments; it can delineate roles within a group. Not to mention that it can lie and even encrypt secret intelligence. When African army ants go on ravaging expeditions, the scout troops leave scent trails that instruct the main corps to hold back, advance or surround a victim. And as if that weren’t enough, some researchers report that ant language can even be used mathematically. One species of ant, it seems, can combine its language with the value pi to measure surface area.

  It was raining outside, and through the patter of raindrops I could hear hammering. A carpenter was nailing up moulding in the little bunkhouse that would become my sister’s bedroom. It was nice to hear his talk, now and then, of lath, tongue-and-groove board, and other down-to-earth objects that create a concrete space. Sometimes I would even intersperse my writing periods with time spent weeding out the contents of the workshop, where the former owners had generously left everything behind. The tools invited me to sort through them, with their practical, unambiguous names and uses. Chisels, pliers, files, drills, nails and screws of all sizes could be arranged in a pleasing order, and, that done, I cheerfully sorted out busted electrical cords, dried-up cans of paint and other things that disturbed my neat system. I have long had the desire to straighten out the hubbub of life, and the workshop could be a stand-in.

  Words about life are different. They have fuzzy edges, wide-ranging associations and varying layers, so it’s hard to build anything truly stable out of them. These days philosophers solve that problem by making language abstract, but in doing so, of course, you’re peeling away life itself. Naturally it takes a certain amount of distance to get a complete view of any topic. That goes for me as well, and in order to write about broader contexts I must be alone, away from the distractions of the social layers of language. This is why I’ve often sought out-of-the-way writing nooks.

  The farthest I took this urge was in my romantic youth, when I believed that life’s big questions could be dealt with in the course of one summer. I also thought of myself as a woman who loved islands, and I was on the hunt for the most isolated ones I could find. When a travel company launched Robinson Crusoe Weeks on the west coast of Sweden I did not hesitate to contact them. The company would arrange for a tent, supplies and transport by boat to an uninhabited skerry where you would spend a week alone. That was what I thought I longed for: an islet on the horizon of freedom.

  On the boat there, I learned that I would be the only one for this Robinson Crusoe week in two senses. It had thus far only been tested out by a former war correspondent who hadn’t been able to endure her stay on the skerry due to some very bad thunderstorms.

  After the boat left me on the island, I took stock of the necessities I’d been provided with. Besides the tent and a jerry can of water, there was a shapeless dry bag that mostly seemed to contain canned goods. It was a preview of the pleasures awaiting me for the week. Because it was so heavy, I left it all on the beach as I familiarised myself with the island.

  It was truly the opposite of civilisation, for it belonged to no one and was about as inviting as if it were home to a recluse. The trees were more like bushes, squat against the elements, and poking up among the roaring breakers were sharp precipices and cairns that looked like suitable homes for snakes. At the water’s edge lay fragile, flute-like bird skeletons among boards from boats, broken into wing shapes. So many delicate things seemed to have been smashed there. Something incredible must have happened on this windswept island. In the middle of it was a split rock with a handful of sooty streaks like those left by a lightning bolt. I dragged my gear over to it and put up my tent on the miniature meadow that had formed in the centre of the cleft.

  And what was I supposed to do then? It seemed a bit abstract to ponder life, so in want of any other task I started in on a simple canned dinner. Among the food in the dry bag was a camping stove, which I placed on a hillock. It was hard to light, and all I could manage to achieve was a quick, reptilian flame that vanished as soon as it appeared. At the same time, a pungent trickle spread down the rocks and onto my hands. The kerosene chamber was leaking.

  Resigned, I went to wash my hands in the sea but found myself just standing there halfway down to the shore. At the water’s e
dge was a slab full of seals. They were packed as close as humans on a beach, but even in their lazy state they were watchfully facing the water, ready to disappear at the slightest hint of danger. To keep from bothering them, I quietly retreated.

  It was still warm, although the clouds had already been towering when I arrived on the skerry. I had just finished another round of the island when the rain came tiptoeing across the rocks. As I climbed into the tent, a few drops followed. The tent, too, turned out to be leaky.

  It rapidly grew dark outside as the clouds settled over the island like a lid. But then it was suddenly bright, and a thunderclap blended with the shrieking of gulls. The lightning must have struck the water. This turned out to be merely a prelude, for soon the loud wind competed with the constant crashes of thunder.

  I had never before been afraid of thunderstorms. In fact, I loved to stand by the window at my partner’s house in the countryside to admire the show. But this time was different. When lightning flashed, the zippers of the tent clanged like alarm clocks against the poles that were thrust into the wet meadow. I was surrounded by metal, and I could taste it all on the roof of my mouth. Drops came through the canvas, marking time like the infinite minutes of a water clock. The thunderstorm seemed to be searching its way across the island.

  By the time an hour had passed I had cold sores in my mouth and was achy under the eyes. What was life? Tiny electrical impulses that gave rise to heartbeats and muscle contractions in bodies that could also be destroyed by electricity. I was freezing. I had sought freedom only to find myself exposed to the elements.

  When the thunder returned that night, I felt an intense longing for the tightly bunched houses of the little coastal community. For all of history, being together and belonging to a group has meant security. I imagined that shimmering schools of fish were moving all around the island, bodies close together like drops in a wave, but my only company was a lone ant that had lost its way and wandered into the tent.