It isn’t easy being on the run. Especially when you have nowhere to go and you make more enemies in a single day than most people make in their entire lives.
There are more enemies around me than I can count, but, for the moment, I don’t have to worry about them. They’ll probably be dead by morning anyway.
I pause to rest for a moment, and I chance a look behind me. I groan inwardly.
The man, with his floppy hat and his denim overalls, has found my hiding place. And he means to destroy it, along with its inhabitants, with me in it. I knew I wasn’t safe here. Too many pedestrians here for it to be a safe place to hide. He always targets the highly populated areas first.
I know what’s going to happen next. I still have nightmares about what he did to my home. I doubt that this place will be any different to him than all the other civilizations he’s destroyed. Only this time, I doubt I’ll make it out in time.
So I turn and face the man, and as I do so, I gaze at my escape route through the bushes. Only, the man is blocking it. So, as I look up at the man, I’m forced to face the truth. As he starts pumping thick, poisonous smog into the air, I look back at the civilization he’s so bent on destroying.
I’m lucky I’m not in the center of the civilization, where the smog is thickest. Even though I won’t make it out alive, at least I’ll be able to make peace with myself before I die. The poor folks in there though, they’re just dead before they know it: no panic, no confusion, no pain. Maybe I’m not so lucky after all.
All around me, civilians are rushing about in a blind panic, oblivious to the fact that it’s too late to save themselves. Then I hear a low mournful wail, and I realize that the queen has just died. I see the smog rushing towards me, and I don’t feel fear. I only feel pity, pity for the human race.
Do you sympathize with me? Would you still sympathize if I told you my race, my culture, my religion? In fact, would you still sympathize with me if I told you my species? For you do not care of the repeated murders my species has suffered. You call them tiny even!
For I am simply a fire ant: the lowest of the low, the tiniest of the tiny. However, despite my bony outer shell and sesame seed sized brain, I have a mind of my own, and I am very, very alive. How then can you justify the humans that kill thousands of us every day, just to have a prettier lawn? For my species, there is no justice in this world, as far as you humans are concerned.
So now, the final question; now that you know that I am but a lowly insect, do you still sympathize with me?