HEARTS OF THE CITY: Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news. : Once More Into the Sugar Bowl

Everyone gets the enemy they deserve. Most of us acknowledge this eternal truth, but I would like to extend it a bit further today. After all, we find ourselves in deep summer here in Los Angeles, and the peppery heat encourages brooding. When it’s August in L.A., you either get out or you brood.

Anyway, the other night I had padded out to the kitchen in my nightshirt to get a glass of milk. The hour was about 3 a.m. Only a small shaft of light from the refrigerator penetrated the darkness. I stood there, gulping down my milk, when I felt this tingling around my ankles.

And I knew. Without looking down or turning on the light, I realized I was standing in a column of Iridomyrmex humilis . Argentines. Our most successful insect enemy, the ant. They had come back, millions of them, to cart off the contents of my kitchen, bit by tiny bit.

Somehow, it figures that the Argentine has grown into our special enemy. In the jungle, the bugs that do battle with man all want to suck his blood. This strategy coincides with the primal nature of the tropics. Here, Iridomyrmex couldn’t care less about our blood. It has pegged us for the consumerists we are, and merely intends to rob us.

And he is a world champion at his trade. After I turned on the light that recent night, I saw that the ants were sawing off the constituent parts of a carrot cake and hauling it off as efficiently as a chop shop takes down a stolen Alfa Romeo. Unlike roaches, who simply hang around to munch and munch, the ants were conducting a true heist: They were removing the carrot cake from my premises and taking it to theirs.

Each one had this tiny part resting on its shoulders as it marched down the trail. Did they plan to reassemble the carrot cake once they got it home? Or would each of them put their piece in a tiny refrigerator for the next night’s dessert? Who knows. I admired them for a moment and then committed ant murder on a mass scale. And, as we all know, the mass murder did little good. They would return the next night. That’s another correlative to Los Angeles. Like smog, like talk radio, nothing will make the Argentines go away. Out at UC Riverside they’ve been trying for years to find a solution to the Argentine. Nada .

“These ants are very tough,” says Michael Rust, the chief ant expert at UC Riverside. “We’ve tried all kinds of baits, but they change their preferences. They might like chicken for a couple of days and then, boom, they move on to something else.”

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Just like any crowd of restaurant grazers on La Brea, see what I mean? We have ants who turn up their noses at chicken because they’re bored . They want roasted lamb in currant sauce, and they’ll do anything to get it. Once, several years ago, I opened my freezer door to find a whole brigade of frozen ants on the inside. They had worked their way through a tiny opening in the door gasket and died on a suicidal dash to grab something of great value.

But what? At the time the freezer contained only some ice cubes and a doggy bag from a Chinese restaurant. Had they decided they would risk their lives for a taste of kungpao chicken? Who knows.

For what it’s worth, the Argentine also comes from far away, like most of us. Rust says it entered the United States at New Orleans most likely, riding on some coffee beans from South America. It spread quickly, enjoying phenomenal success until it found its favorite home in Southern California.

At this point, the Argentine has pushed aside most other ant species and, for that matter, anything else that ever stood in its way, he says. “One colony of Argentines will cooperate with other colonies until they grow into truly huge populations. You can get tens of millions of ants in one of these networks. But they are ruthless with other species. If you drop a cockroach into a colony of Argentines, the cockroach won’t have a chance. They will be all over it in seconds, pulling off its legs, biting it.”

Yes, that sound like the Argentines. Actually, I believe they intend the same fate for humans. Scientists will deny this, of course, not wishing to alarm us. But the evidence is mounting. On several evenings this summer I have noted a squadron of ants in my bedroom, a place utterly lacking in the usual attractants of food or water. They try to play innocent on the wall next to the bed, as if they have no serious purpose. That is, until the light goes out. What happens then? I’ll tell you what. They start pacing along the wall from a point next to my pillow down to my toes. They are measuring me.

And then there’s this business with the television commercial. Have you seen it? A group of ants is seen carrying a beer bottle along the ground. When they reach their nest, they plop the bottle into the opening, neck down. You hear the cap being popped inside the nest, the beer glug glugging, and then a band--somewhere in the nest--starts playing “Get Down Tonight.” The ants are having a great time. But remember one thing: That’s a human band they’ve got playing down there, probably chained to the bandstand. And those ants are Argentines.

Check it out. Forewarned is forearmed.