Schmitty + Aphid

A love story between an ant and an aphid in the time of Coronavirus

Schmitty was in the middle of deciding whether to eat one of the members of her crew when Aphid breezed in. Well, more like fell off the pergola where they’d set up house. House, meaning a leaf for Aphid and an easy route to the drain pipe and backyard for Schmitty. Schmitty didn’t take her work home most nights. And especially not on the nights when Aphid took to falling off the pergola.

Schmitty rubbed her pincers together, letting the crew know that she was calling it quits for the night. The colony kept moving in their orderly rows, moving pieces of the decomposing squirrel from the far edge of the backyard to the drainpipe where they would enter and make their way through the city tunnels to the locations Schmitty had okayed for drop-off. 

She’d personally visited each one. It had taken days. Days that Morty worried they didn’t have. Altonio would be back from the Cat Hotel any day now and they needed to make sure the squirrel, dead as it was, was gone before the maggots got to it and before Morgan started sniffing around with exterminators. She had a nose on her, that human. 

Speaking of observant, Schmitty didn’t want to say anything, but she knew Altonio wasn’t coming back anytime soon. None of the humans were; especially not the ones who got into cars with suitcases and cans of food. Schmitty knew the signs from her days in the Grand Street Tunnel. When the air got hot on the dry side, a lot of the art and music humans went upstate for the summer. The restaurant and outdoor market humans stayed behind for the tourists, so the tunnels were still at risk of collapsing.

There were no tunnels here, but there were drainpipes and a job to be done. Her crew would work into the night and through sunrise with Schmitty watching over them from high above the yard on her wooden beam. Aphid would be close by on her leaf. Adjacent, but not touching. Touching was too dangerous now; especially with Aphid getting swept off of her leaf by the breezes more often than not. Schmitty worried about the toll it was taking. 

Every time she fell, Aphid became even less of her least. But she was a tough broad. Schmitty wouldn’t have taken up next to anything made of weaker stuff. Speaking of taking up, Schmitty needed to extend her left pincer to Aphid. They would wait for a slight breeze and once it blew, Schmitty would skitter down the pergola to gather Aphid up carefully from the ground and then make their way up the drainpipe and onto the pergola. They would wait for another breeze before Schmitty could move Aphid to her leaf. Once Aphid was safely on her leaf, then Schmitty would move slowly away. Back to being adjacent and not touching.

They would sit that way for hours while Schmitty watched her crew. Morty was due for a site visit in the morning. Schmitty would meet him on the fire escape. She made him climb up, even when Altonio was gone. For some reason, Morty didn’t complain. Schmitty knew that soon the breezes would get stronger. Soon she’d have trouble locating Aphid. Soon, the leaf and Aphid would be gone. But not this evening. 

Schmitty looked over at the leaf and knew Aphid was there. 

And for the moment, it was enough.

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