A satellite would see a bright pinprick of green on a wrinkled spread
of variegated tan with a blue hole in the middle. Traveling east to west
at seven thousand miles per hour, it would take the satellite two
seconds to pass over the unlit expanse of Anza-Borrego State Park and
almost a minute to reach the blue Pacific stretching away from the
lights and traffic of San Diego.
The satellite was traveling way too fast to have seen me sitting on that pinprick of green being rudely attacked by a pinprick of red, genus Solenopsis, fire ant. My unwelcome mini-visitor apparently was deluded by heroic visions of downing a megafauna to feed his village hidden somewhere on this oasis of green known as Christmas Circle in Borrego Springs, the cultural center of six hundred thousand acres of desert. The miniscule ant bit skin to get a grip intending to then administer his sting of death, perhaps without understanding it would have taken him plus his entire village and maybe several others to down this particular specimen.
Or maybe he was just pissed that his territory had been invaded. Two days later, his mark is still visible, still irritating, and I have to wonder if he survived his sudden launch into space, an autonomic reaction to his bite. If so, I hope he carried home tales of evil giants and a warning to his kind to quit messing with the big ones.
He left me with a thought though ... size does not equate to impact. Each of us may only be 1 of 7.5 billion planet mates, but we each have impact.
Evil giants. Very good!
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