The extinction of a kitchen colony

A trail of pheromones was left by the scouts to lead fellow colony members down the trail to the nourishment the one scout had discovered. The ant colony lived in the kitchen, specifically in the damp wooden cabinet below the sink. The false sun was still not yet overhead when the scout left the trail. Other workers soon followed it, the corpses of cockroaches (unknowingly poisoned by the giant beings that lit the false sun) being surrounded and consumed by worker ants, who had gathered after having followed the scout-created trail. 

The pheromones intensified along the trail as some workers began traveling back to the nest while others left the nest to treat themselves to the cockroach carcasses. It appeared every cockroach in the area had died, meaning soon multiple pheromone paths were being created to different corpses, workers scattering among the feast, no longer at risk of being crushed by the larger insects as they had been when alive. The workers darted down the chemical trails, some engaging in trophallaxis with nursery ants to ensure the nutrition travelled throughout the colony to the larvae and the queen. 

Unbeknownst to the colony currently feasting, the human beings who lit the false sun had set a trap - they had wanted to kill all the exoskeleton-containing creatures in what they believed to be their kitchen. Never mind that carpenter ants had been colonizing the trees surrounding the area since before houses were ever built. Human activity over the decades had dampened the wooden structure of the house, making it, like the fallen branches soaked in rainwater, a condition where a virgin queen would feel comfortable moving in, unaware she would be endangering herself and the structural integrity of the building, unaware that the wood she and her descendants would inhabit was a building at all. 

Cockroaches, who had followed the specific humans currently living in the house when they had moved in, stowed away in luggage, spent nights (nights before the night that opened this story) feasting, unaware their fate was being sealed with every mobile mouthpart moving from the bait to their mouth openings, then being transported and shared with their housemates. Carpenter ants, who had believed themselves to have found food in the cockroaches, would be the newest victims of the pesticide-containing bait.

Now the ants, who had feasted on the cockroach carcasses, were going to find themselves confused and disoriented, perhaps even paralyzed, unable to comprehend that their feast the prior night was why the workers were beginning to die. Other workers would move their dead sisters to the refuse chamber of the satellite nest, but some would start feeling the effects of the neurotoxin themselves after trying to leave their main nest for the satellite, finding their mandibles unable to unclench the dead ant as the worker that had been attempting to throw out the trash instead became yet another part of it.

That night when they feasted on cockroaches alongside the general crumbs the humans left, workers engaged in trophallaxis, ensuring their siblings, the larvae, also received the nourishment. They had no way of knowing that the proteins and other vital nutrients were being passed alongside a chemical designed specifically to attack insect nervous systems, that by feeding larvae, being a cooperative super-organism, the larvae too would become paralyzed and die.But they did, never metamorphosing into adult ants, never going on to start colonies of their own.

The false sun, the lightbulbs that illuminated the kitchen, turned on and the adult female human entered. She happily swept up the ant corpses, relieved that the pest control company she had hired seemed to have successfully finished the job. First the cockroaches died, becoming nothing more than dust eventually, then the carpenter ants that had been climbing on the dirty dishes Paul left in the sink - despite Mom’s repeated warnings - began having their own mass dying event. Soon they would be nothing but a disgusting memory, one that occasionally would feature in her nightmares.

The female human’s son, Paul, would never admit to his mom that he had liked watching the ants go about their business. Now he would have to leave the warmth of the kitchen to encounter nature or stand up to see it, anyway. He had overslept, so he didn’t witness the overnight ant slaughter, just fewer and fewer of them in the kitchen, and the piles of sawdust Paul had grown accustomed to seeing on the floor by the sink stopped appearing. 

Paul no longer looked at the floor in the kitchen now when he waited for water to boil, the closest to cooking he ever engaged in. Sometimes he would stare out the kitchen window at the front yard, thinking about the ant hills there. He would also spent time at that same window watching grackles, robins, mourning doves, cardinals, or blue jays feed on the various leaves and seeds the trees surrounding the yard spilt onto the carpet of grass they fluttered through. That was during the good times, when the weather cooperated. During the uneventful times, Paul distracted himself or left the kitchen, setting a timer for when his pasta would be ready to enter the colander. One benefit of the carpenter ants being gone was the family no longer had to worry about how unsanitary using their kitchen sink might be. Paul celebrated this as he celebrated most occasions: by eating pasta.

The structural damage the ants had caused to the kitchen was not visibly noticeable for over a year after the ants themselves had perished. The door to the cabinet weakened from water damage until it broke, and the tunnels the ants left inside the wooden frame became visible to human beings. Spiders had since colonized the abandoned area, as they often did, and this specific cabinet hadn’t been used since Mom first noticed the cockroaches, hoping they would go away on their own for around six months before hiring specialists to make them disappear. Now the house required that entire cabinet area, built into the wall as well as supporting the sink, to be replaced.

Paul just didn’t look down when he used the sink now. He had no income, so he couldn’t help with the rebuilding of the cabinet. Unemployment was difficult for a myriad of reasons, and being unable to contribute fixing the house falling apart was one of them. Boredom was another, one watching the ants used to help with, although now Paul rarely thought about the former occupants of his family’s home except to lament the destruction of the cabinet. It made the kitchen look unkempt, and Mom constantly complained about it whenever she was in the kitchen at the same time as Paul, simply because Paul was the one who had opened the cabinet door when it broke.