Farming with Anteaters

As the dreariness of the halfhearted government 'lockdown' drags on, my dreams become more fraught with anxiety and apocalyptic calamity. I dreamed that after discovering all of my old friends had disowned me, and feeling as wretched and alone as one possibly could be, I looked up into the night sky and saw a sight both awe inspiring and terrifying. Amongst the stars was an immense series of twinkling lights, in the pattern of a snowflake, sweeping across the broad expanse of space. This turned out to be an enormous fleet of extraterrestrial crafts that was here to wipe away mankind by turning the world into a swirling vortex. But this is not the story I wish to tell, for it is too bleak even for this blog...

In a later dream that same night, I was with my friends Gaby and Matt, and we stumbled into the back garden of a Wyvernhorn academic. As is to be expected from such tenants, the garden was in something of a sorry state. Sitting down in the overgrown grass, I had ample time to look about me. A long window communicated into the dwelling's kitchen-dining area and I observed copious amounts of marijuana sitting on the windowsill, along with an assortment of potted plants covered in brown paper. It looked as though they had not been watered in a very long time. What most caught my attention, however, were the two curious animals bumbling around in the garden.

They were giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), or 'sworders' as I used to call them as a child, going about their instinctive drive to collect as many ants as possible. The garden was in fact an 'ant farm', and some tents housing interested merchants had been erected so as to check that daily ant quotas were being met. I wondered how they stopped the anteaters from eating them all, and how many the animals needed to consume for themselves to continue functioning. (Some quick research indicates 30,000 ants or termites.) Perhaps it was similar to Chinese cormorant fishing, where a string tied around the birds' necks prevent them from swallowing any fish. The poncho-clad merchants got up from their easy chairs and left for lunch, leaving my friends and I alone with the animals.

As soon as the ant merchants were gone, the anteaters came sniffing over to where we sat and began prodding us with their snouts. I told my friends not to be concerned, for they were mostly benign, peaceable creatures that only attacked if harassed. We tried to ignore then, but it was like the saddle-billed storks all over again, and the prodding continued. When asked if they could harm us, I admitted that they could open us up like sandwiches with their long fore claws if they chose to. There are only three cases in recent history of giant anteaters killing humans, but even so, we decided it would be best to leave. The secrets of the Wyvernhorn ant farm would have to remain hidden for now.