Fungal Insanity Ants and Me

A while ago, as part of the internet’s Attention Deficit Education, I watched a short video about a kind of fungus that infects the brains of ants in the jungle. The fungus grows in the ant’s brain, eventually driving him crazy and forcing him to climb upward. When the ant reaches the very top limb of a tree his head basically explodes, releasing fungal spores which spread in all the directions of the wind. The spores infect other ants and, as with all things in nature, the cycle continues. After I got over the initial “Holy crap,” level of astonishment, I started wondering what it must be like to be driven upward by some mysterious internal force. At first I could hardly believe that a creature's brain could be affected in such a specific way. But I was forced to revise my opinion tonight not long after I walked out of my apartment. I was reminded, in fact, that that feeling was something with which I am very familiar.

It started because I had nothing to do. I moved from room to room in my apartment, but there was nothing urgent in any of them, nothing that required any thought or attention on my part. I turned on the television but it didn’t take long to realize that the television didn’t require any thought or attention, either. Like all of the rooms of the apartment, it was doing just fine without me. With the television off I just stood in the middle of the room for a moment, coming to the realization that the apartment was empty- even with me in it. Rather than dwell on that fact, I threw a few school things in a bag and left.

I didn’t really have an intended destination. I had put my books in my bag to create the semblance of purpose, but my studies didn’t require my attention any more than anything else did. If you put forth a minimal effort and get B’s, you do more; if you put forth a minimal effort and get A’s… well, you carry your books around and pretend you’ll do more. Even without an explicit destination, however, I knew where I was going: Starbuck’s. That light jazz-world-ethnic soundtrack is like a siren’s song to the bored. The mermaid, she called to me.

But after walking three blocks and arriving at the womb of earth-tones and cushions, I walked past it without even slowing down. It wasn’t a decision so much of a lack of a decision; I was already walking, and I just didn’t stop. I walked a few more blocks toward another coffeehouse. Passed it. I walked to the university campus. I walked through the university campus, with all of its quiet, well-worn niches carved out specifically for study. Passed it. At this point some conscious part of my mind- silent up until this point- started to wonder just where it was being carried, and why it hadn’t been informed.

I walked a few more blocks to a neighborhood I’d never visited before. I slowed down and spotted yet another coffeehouse (this is a university town, after all). This one was, of course, a clone of the others I had passed, though a slightly more interestingly decorated clone. I went in, ordered a coffee, and I sit here now, writing this and drinking my coffee. It wasn’t the décor that had drawn me across town, though. It wasn’t anything about the coffee shop at all, in fact. It was the fact that I had never been here before, and that fact somehow made it worth it.

Now, it is important- though probably unnecessary- to mention that my head did not explode upon my arrival, releasing spores into a new part of town. This makes me rather more fortunate than the ant. But we shouldn’t feel too badly for him. Most ants without the benefit of a fungus-driven madness never reach the heights achieved by our crazed little friend. Just before his the two hemispheres of his brain very suddenly parted ways, that ant had a better view than he or any ant he knew had ever seen. Who knows? At that point he might have even been crazy enough to enjoy it, if for only a moment.