He had taken a short drive to his favourite stretch of the river for lunch.
He did this on occasion. It was a pleasant, grassy spot where it was peaceful enough to allow a person to hear the water dipping and churning its way through the narrow channel. It was just a five minute trip away from the halls of academia, where he lectured in philosophy at the city’s main university. He was well known around the campus and although widely respected, his somewhat overbearing sense of prestige and eminence had the majority of his students maintain a respectable distance. ‘Hail fellow, well met’, he wasn’t. This place was always quiet, and there was rarely anyone to hail.
He opened the plastic container and took out a sandwich that had been prepared by his wife that morning. As he began to eat, he considered the weather, the scenery and the food to be most propitious. It was his calling that had him think that way.
Meanwhile, the red fire ant was particularly stealthy in the way it ascended the inside of the scholar’s trouser leg. Eventually, once happy that it had found a spot where the skin was found to be at its most inviting, it bit down hard.
The pain struck like a lightning bolt!
He jumped up smacking his rear. He was doing this partly as an attempt to ease the pain and partly to ensure that whatever insect had brought the event about was dispatched to meet its maker. The location of the wound was his left buttock. His sandwiches were now scattered in front of him, no longer appetizing or edible. After dropping the spoiled food into a bin, he made his way back to his car.
As he went, he pondered the event. Intellectually, he considered that some universal imbalance had been at play. All in all, he was aware of the fact that the incident had played heavily upon his intellectual sensibilities.
For him it seemed to be totally unreasonable that such a tiny insect had been in a position to know exactly what was about to happen, before he did!