Backyard Graveyard

So as I was taking this picture, I started to notice a funny sensation on my right foot. I look down, and lo and behold I have ants just crawling all over it. A number of thoughts ran through my head at this moment.

First thought: OH MY GOD GET THEM OFF ME.

Second thought: But Sean, you're supposed to be into animal studies. Are you really going to just --

Third thought: YES I AM SHUT UP AAAAAHH

At which point I proceeded to exterminate the ants with extreme prejudice.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned from this. First, I don't think it was TOTALLY wrong to get the ants off me and squash the ones in my shoe. I can't walk around covered in ants, and there's not a much better way to get them off of me anyway, besides which they are ants and don't feel pain so much.

Second, and contrariwise, I do take very seriously the notion that other creatures have an agency all their own. They may not be as quote-unquote "animate" as we humans, and their agency may be difficult for us to grasp under traditional definitions of the term, but they do effect change in their environment (my reaction being case in point). It just so happens that their environment was my foot, and I didn't particularly care for the sudden reminder that nature, broadly conceived, is rather inextricably bound up with my non-limited self.

Which, incidentally, was the point of the image I was taking in the first place.