Ants in Tokyo
Sawako Nakayasu
are crowded very crowded indeed and so they are small very small compared to their countryside relatives and so the small Tokyo ants they communicate with small Tokyo ant sounds and they hear each other well whether it is a panic sound or a food sound or a dead bug sound or an eating sound they can hear each other very well very well for a species that doesn't have ears. They communicate very gently but quickly and hear each other, all of each other, all of the many numbers of each other very often and almost all of the time, except when there is a large shiny Tokyo noise like a truck or a girl screaming or crying or a Western-style symphony or something equally loud during which moment the ants cease to hear each other at all because at first they hear the noise and then right after the noise comes a slippery ringing swinging noise that they nervously drink into the inside of their wobbly heads. And then they begin to hear each other again as they grow accustomed to this ringing in the head, they gradually begin to hear each other and the vibrations they make on the waves of the ringings in each others’ heads , and the ringing starts to warp and warble a little bit, and that is how they find each other again so that no one has to feel lost for very long at all, no not at all.
Sawako Nakayasu -
