THE ANTLION

 Albert Park in Durban that ran between St Andrews Street (now named Diakonia Avenue) and the Victoria Embankment in the 1960s, was a gigantic, popular green zone in the city planning of the time. It was an area where children could play on jungle gyms, swings and roundabouts. Flanked by tall residential buildings, this splendid area afforded young couples a safe place for their kids to “hang out”, play and just be children. There were some retirement homes and old age homes along St Andrews Street from which elderly folk would emerge most afternoons to saunter across to the park and soak up some sun or to play bowls on the perfectly manicured bowling greens that were tended with much love by the City Groundsmen. Kids were restricted to certain lawns where they were allowed to play ball games such as impromptu soccer or touch rugby. At the far end near the overpass of a freeway that headed off towards the Bluff, was a Drive-in Roadhouse, the Tropicana, that served the thickest double thick milkshakes on the planet. The consistency was such that this drink was best eaten with an elongated spoon. Adjacent to the Drive-in Roadhouse were cricket nets for the slightly older boys to practice their cricketing skills and allow the younger ones to face a few slower paced shies at the wickets.

Almost daily, after homework had been completed, kids were shooed out of the flats and sent off to play in the park, until the lights flickered to life at the appointed hour and provided the cue to return home, bath and get ready for supper. One little fellow (about 7 or 8 years old and two bricks and a sixpence tall) would scurry along to a neighbouring tower block, climb the stairs to the 30th floor and collect two buddies who were slightly younger. Entrusted into his care by the mother, they would make their way down in the elevator. The reason for climbing the stairs and descending by elevator was because none of them were tall enough to reach the upper floor buttons, but could, at a stretch, just poke an index finger tentatively on the Ground Floor button. The trip down was a trifle quicker. The rest of the afternoon would be spent in the public park, the buddies being returned to their block in good time to meet their daddy in the foyer and obviate the need to climb the interminable flights of stairs upon their return.

Every sunny afternoon around 15h00 a particular old couple would make their way to a bench that overlooked the children’s play area. He would have a book in hand and she some knitting. Ne’er did they seem to run out of reading material or things to knit with the dexterity afforded by years of practice. This was a safe environment both for the children and the old folk. Indeed an adult grandfatherly or grandmotherly type would offer reassurance to the couples who had sent their kids off to play. No-one looked askance at old people taking a healthy interest in the games of children and they, too, were safe – muggings were rarely heard of in these surrounds in those days. An extra layer of care was given by the Municipality in the form of a City Park Official (caretaker) who would oversee the goings-on and monitor any boisterous behaviour that could get out of hand. Seldom did he need to remonstrate with children just enjoying being, generally innocent, growing lads and lasses. 

The retired old fellow with his walking cane would be reading his novel and looking up every now and then to observe the games being played. The children would be running to and fro, and the odd loner would occasionally separate from the rest of his friends to spend some time alone with his own thoughts. The sandpit was a popular place for the youngsters to gather as many antibodies as possible to fight off diseases and viruses that could be floating around in society. No social distancing or perpetual sanitising in those days. A kiddies park provided sufficient inoculation against pathogens that scare the wits out of modern societies.

On one particular day the old man observed a kid playing in a sandy area some distance from the sandpit. The little chap seemed engrossed by what he was witnessing in the soil where he was on his haunches. Every now and again he would stretch out a hand and fiddle in the soil with whatever was scurrying about and had captured his attention. The old man ran his crooked fingers through his long grey beard, put his book aside and muttered a few words to his wife. Slowly he moved towards the little loner playing in the sand and was intrigued by what he witnessed.

There were some indentations in the sand and a host of little ants busily to-and-froing with severed segments of leaf, other bits and pieces of the entomological equivalent of “roadkill”, or other snippets of assorted debris. Ants are some of the most interesting little characters in the world of the living. They are always busy. They are perpetually on some or other mission under the command of their imperial matriarch, The Queen. An ant colony appears to be a single organism with all its constituent parts, workers, soldiers and the like working in unison for the benefit of the society. Yet, they present as individuals at another level of observation – communicating with one another as though they were separate parts of the whole, but who could not long continue to function were they not bound to this very tight social system.

The indentations in the soil were what was of most interest to the child observing this phenomenon. As the old fellow kneeled down beside him, he noticed the boy was watching the activities, not of the ants, but a little Antlion. These creatures burrow into the sand, create an indentation which, as an ant enters it, makes the little insect slide down to the centre point. There he would emerge with a lightning fast maneuver, clasp the ant, and devour it. A neat little trapping mechanism of nature’s own making. The old man used the occasion as a teaching moment and explained to the little fellow what precisely was unfolding at this miniscule level of observable nature.

Then another teaching moment happened – at the level of the adult. The cosmic reality of human existence was revealed in the next instant that began to clear up some perplexing philosophical realities. The little boy stretched out his hand, caught an ant that was heading directly towards the Antlion, and didn’t harm it, but placed it on a different trajectory that avoided certain death. He had been doing this for several minutes and had saved a score of ants, but deprived the Antlion of an easy meal. Interesting to the old man was the nature of the situation. The Antlion was performing its function as nature intended. The ants were doing the bidding of their Queen. The ants could not envisage a future in which they would be devoured by the waiting Antlion. Neither the ants nor the Antlion were aware of the higher hand of the little boy observing them and about to intervene in their microcosm of the world.

It set the old man to thinking about the greater complexity of life. Until the old fellow spoke, the little boy was unaware of being observed. It was unnecessary for the ants and the Antlion to be aware of the higher power looking down upon their machinations. Their grasp of the science of serving their colony and filling their bellies – going about the necessary drudgery of their daily existence – was sufficient for their survival. The old man, convinced as he was most of his life that humanity’s consciousness was the pinnacle, had to rethink his conviction. Man’s quest for knowledge and manipulation of the world to facilitate a meaningful life, had seemed up until that point to encompass the entirety of existence. In the grand scheme of things mankind is far too conceited as he arrogates to himself a complete understanding of the intricacies of existence. 

The thought crossed the mind of the old fellow that it takes a great leap of faith to be an atheist. Viewing the microcosm of this universe that played itself out before him in the park, opened a new perspective. The things we study, the understanding we have of the way things work, all of this, is relative to our position in the greater whole, a universe that may well be out of our purview. The argument can be taken further to incorporate the reality of a higher hand intervening in the history of that which we are aware of, as did the little boy in rescuing the odd ant he was observing.

The explanations we have for the way the universe functions, we have long known, break down at the level of the “nano”. The current concepts of quantum mechanics and quantum computing test the boundaries of our cognition. Scientists Max Planck, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and others have theorised about these concepts, but definitive answers have eluded one and all. 

As for the scene in Albert Park: insects teach lessons, children unlock insights in the old. The New Testament texts reveal their precision in defining the world we live in:

“God chose the foolish things of this world to put the wise to shame. He chose the weak things of this world to put the powerful to shame” 1 Cor 1:27.

©Paul M Haupt