March 3rd Sunday Write Addressed 5th Sunday

Or actually today, Monday, the fifth Sunday plus a day, but the prompt this time wasn’t till the fourth Sunday — March 26 — although still in the same month. So then a week later, April 2nd, I drafted my opening, answering the third of a quartet of springtime (more or less) oriented suggestions.

Thus, for March’s Writers Guild’s “Third Sunday Write” (cf. February 27, et al.):

3. a perfect picnic. . .

It’s the ants that did it. Picnics are generally fraught with danger, they being outside. Wandering skunks; the occasional zombie, in season; one’s freeloading neighbors. And trees, of course, squirrels pelting us with acorns. But what saved us was ants.

Ants are nature’s miracles, small, unobtrusive, but with wee biting parts that are embrued with fire. And a vacuum cleaner with an extra-long extension cord were the tools to capture them. Those who did not have vacuum cleaners could borrow from their wives. But with millions of ants captured now in dirt-bags, we had our weapons.

It took only starving them a single season, and then they were ready.

So, picnics restarted, we bided our time, vacuum cleaners humming, our thumbs hooked and anxious, hovering over the machines’ “reverse” switches. We waited. . . Waited. . . The menaces slowly approaching our blanket.

And then it was time! Thumbs toggling blowers, a fire-hose stream launched — of ANTS! Gnawing through skunks, zombies, like they were Jello. Taking down neighbors, shredding treed squirrels. And when they were done, generously sharing with us the leftovers.

A perfect picnic. . .