Here is another of those two-sentence stories with poetry added. I’m thinking of them as “Minuscule” and quick to read.
Read the first Minuscule, the explanation of why I wrote it and got started on this idea, and search under the category Minuscule for others in the series.
And now – all the Minuscule stories have been made into a print book – each story with a pen and ink illustration. Click to see Minuscule on Amazon.
Indifference
Last night I spent a few minutes watching a minute red ant crawling in the bathroom sink, trying angle after angle of approach with a frantic kind of efficiency in his attempts to conquer the gradient and escape, but each time he reached a point where the upward curve grew too steep and he slid back down to the drain: That’s it, that’s your best bet, I told him, go into the drain, you stupid thing, and I went to bed, though as I imagined the dark dank journey into the plumbing, a trip with no clear end to it, I could see why he continued to struggle with the hopelessly smooth slope instead.
This morning I found his small corpse curled in a microscopic ball at the bottom of the sink; I turned on the faucet and washed him down the drain.
The gods laugh.
Your circumstances
and your fate
intersect.
No help is coming. You are
not worth the effort.
(Shadorma 104)
7/17/18
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
All of natures creatures meet their fate some how, including us. So glad we aren’t washed down the sink.
Yes, me too. I have lately been thinking about this subject for plants, where I have been reading how they give off distress signals when they are cut, and so on. There is tree work being done at the high school across the street today and I am thinking of how the trees might be feeling. Maybe they are happy to get those dangling dead limbs off, though.
Interesting you should commnt on the trees. My neighborhood recently had trees trimmed and I too was wondering about their feelings.
I sometimes help spiders out of the sink (piece of paper). But I would not want to set an ant loose in my house. (K)
I’m not fond of insects in the house, but today I let a confused moth out the window. I feel I did my good deed for the day.
There’s a fly buzzing around here I’d like to let out…
[…] “Indifference” is the title of the story. Look here to read it. […]
I try to rescue most trapped insects and animals who find their way into our house but some do have to die, ants among them.
An insect in the sink. I do not interfere. Just use the other sink. But…I have a lot of sympathy for these creatures who have gotten themselves into a situation they do not understand.