from the fantastic patterns of dreams to the surrealistic behaving of reality

written in Dinglish (that's Germanic English)

N�rnberg, Mittelfranken, 2007-04-29 - 3:06 a.m.

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studies on ants

Which seldomly I do � I went on this fine early summer evening to the countryside by train � taking my byke with me � I was frustrated, because I was invited this Saturday evening by a goood friend, but in the last moment I got a cancellation, which I understood � Maria is a very good friend & if she cancels, she has very good reasons � no problem for me �

But what to do with this already started & planned Saturday? � sitting all eveneing alone at home didn�t convince me � aah � it was such fine weather � why not make a short trip to the country-side?

Yes as in a much older entry I'd told you � I went again to a 20 km away small village near Nuremberg to have a nice evening trip through the forrests & woods there �

I�ve been born on the countryside � our playgrounds were the woods, the meadows, the fields, the farm yards. � the woods were very close by � about 5 minutes to walk so the woods were some of our favourite playgrounds �

Since then I always liked the cover & shelter of woods � all country I later on watched without woods seemed to me shallow & empty � a country without woods is like sleeping in a room where all day & night is full light on your face � no way for me � I always liked the shadows & shelters of tree groves � woods were the hideaway against everything bad I felt in my childhood..

Well � but that was a long time ago � meanwhile I noticed that there are more & more wild wild boars in our woods - - there was no dangerious animal in the woods in my childhood � but boars are really very dangerious � the highest accident rate in zoo�s is done by wild hogs.

& now they are running around free inside our once tamed woods - I feel threatened & I don�t feel free anymore to walk through the forests like in my childhood.

But I heard also that they are very shy - - well probably if you don�t meet them personally..

So driving with a byke through ways & paths through the woods seems okay for me - & I don� t go the underground of the woods where I might find a sleeping horde of wild boars which of course would attack their invader to the ground. � I got cautious meanwhile, but on the other hand I seldomly heard, that a person got attacked by wild boars in woods. � but seldomly is more than enough for me..

Well in fact I didn�t� meet none of them today - & in fact I didn�t had in mind to talk about tigers, lions & wilds boars today � just some simple observations:

I found a big anthill there � the �red wood ants� � a very huge species (about 8 mm to 1 cm length) , which builds huge ant hills in the woods - - they are meanwhile rare & under green peace protection � but if ever you find one of their huge ant hills it�s really amazing � of course you can�t step too close, cos by then they�d attack you - but I stood there in one meter distance for a while & watched them cautiously


I watchet them & watched them & wondered, what the hell they were doing there - well I�m a primitive human being � I don�t understand the way of ants - - there were thrillions (some 100 or 1000ths) running above their hill � a lot of them where carrying something � like ant eggs �tiny little wigs, some vew with insects � I watched a large fly moving moving there around & wondered why the ants didn�t attack her, till I noticed that she was already dead, torn by a much smaller ant under her.

I noticed some ants carrying little twigs & dried needles upwards, & some carrying little twigs downwards � every now & then they met compagnons which sometimes also tried to help to get the little sticks this or the other way - yes: �this or the other way� � there seemed to be no real conclusion where on of these little building materials was decided to go � they pulled it to the left, to the right, upwards, downwards � some tiny ant even pulled an about 3 mm diameter & about 3 cm length in one of the big (1 cm size) holes (entrances) of that ant hill � I was astounded, that he got it all in -

What looked really conufsingly to me � all these thousands of ants moving around like crazy , about 10 or 20 percents of them carrying arround materials in a strange zick-zack way � well will they ever find their goal?

Why does the one carry a little stick upwards while the other one carries a stick down? � Do the really know what they do?

I really wonder?

Like once Mark Twain wrote:

It seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated bird. During the many summers, now, I have watched him, when I ought to have been in better business, and I have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have no experience of those wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham. I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest working creature in the world,--when anybody is looking,--but his leather-headedness is the point I make against him. He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? Go home? No,--he goes anywhere but home. He doesn't know where home is. His home may be only three feet away,--no matter, he can't find it. He makes his capture, as I have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts; not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it backwards dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists in into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top--which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple, when he gets up there he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursor glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more--as usual, in a new direction. At the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down; meantime he has been over all the ground for two yards around, and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. Now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then marches aimlessly off, in as violent a hurry as ever. He traverses a good deal of zig-zag country, and by and by stumbles on this same booty again. He does not remember to have ever seen it before; he looks around to see which is not the way home, grabs his bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures he had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along. Evidently the friend remarks that a last year's grasshopper leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it "around here somewhere." Evidently the friend contracts to help him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly antic, (pun not intentional) they take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest and confer together. They decide that something is wrong, they can't make out what. Then they go at it again, just as before. Same result. Mutual recriminations follow. Evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. They warm up, and dispute ends in a fight. They lock themselves together and chew each other's jaws for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs. They make up and go to work again in the same old insane way, but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may, the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. Instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way. By and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay, the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and then each starts off in a different direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it.
There in the Black Forest, on the mountain side, I saw an ant go through with such a performance as this with a dead spider of fully ten times his own weight. The spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to resist. He had a round body the size of a pea. The little ant--observing that I was noticing--turned him on his back, sunk his fangs into his throat, lifted him into the air and started vigorously off with him, stumbling over little pebbles, stepping on the spider's legs and tripping himself up, dragging him backwards, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him backwards, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him up stones six inches high instead of going around them, climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping from their summits ,--and finally leaving him in the middle of the road to be confiscated by any other fool of an ant that wanted him. I measured the ground which this ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what he had accomplished inside of twenty minutes would constitute some such job as this,--relatively speaking,--for a man; to-wit: to strap two eight-hundred pound horses together,carry then eighteen hundred feet, mainly over (not around) bowlders averaging six feet high, and in the course of the journey climb up and jump from the top of one precipice like Niagara, and three steeples, each a hundred and twenty feet high; and then put the horses down, in an exposed place, without anybody to watch them, and go off to indulge in some other idiotic miracle for vanity's sake.
Science has recently discovered that the ant does not lay up anything for winter use. This will knock him out of literature, to some extent. He does not work, except when people are looking, and only then when the observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be taking notes. This amounts to deception, and will injure him for the Sunday schools. He has not judgment enough to know what is good to eat from what isn't. This amounts to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for him. He cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. This amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact is established, thoughtful people will cease to look up to him, the sentimental will cease to fondle him. His vaunted industry is but a vanity and of no effect, since he never gets home with anything he starts with. This disposes of the last remnant of his reputation and wholly destroys his main usefulness as a moral agent, since it will make the sluggard hesitate to go to him any more. It is strange beyond comprehension, that so manifest a humbug as the ant has been able to fool so many nations and keep it up so many ages without being found out.

I decided to play god to this little huge anthill by collecting a handfull of dried pine needles & poured them over the hill � curious of course how they would react � there was a short confusion in that area, where the pine needles fell � but within seconds, as they found out that it was no danger � they didn�t care anymore about the new pine needles � well I had awaited some thankful affection to me, like kneeling down to the big giant provider who pours as present free building materials, that would need 26 ants to work for long long hours to carry them there up

Well I sent you new building materials � why don�t you care?!?

Probably they take gifts from gods & nature as granted, - let them fall wherever they go � we have enough trouble with our own little duties �

Why is a single ant so concerned to put things about twice his own weight to the right place? � Are they telepathic? -Does the Queen tell them what to do? � Or do they get daily instructions � like ? � You go for wood! � You help make constructions on our hill! - You go out for Hunting! � You take care for our eggs! � You attack our enemies! � You stumble around like crazy just to confuse those who write about us! - - They would even die to carry one little stupid thing from one place to another
On the other hand � if some alien would watch us silly, greedy little humans � walking crazyly around on the streets acting & behaving like we humans naturally do.. � What else would he think about us, than we think about ants? �

(Well these ants - they really don�t know what they do! .. by the way: "do you really know what you do in your daily life, than just reacting to some ideas, liabilities & ordeals & expectations - exaxtly?" (what for & why especially?) - are there real goals in you life to be recognized?

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