March 23, 2022

PROVERBS 6: 6-11

  
Each Spring, when the moths appear, we all remember to put up or pull down our screens – especially in the night.
 
Moths search for the light.
 
Each Spring, when the moths appear, after I put up my screens, I think of Monkey Monahan.
 
We were teenage boys at the time – around 14 or 15 years of age. Or maybe we were 13.  Well, anyway, it was Spring and this meant we became big game hunters.
 
I’ve gone fishing and crabbing a few times, but that Spring was the only time I did anything like this – hunting and killing.
 
I was no Franciscan. I was no Hindu or Buddhist. Monkey Monahan and I were cold blooded killers.
 
Now, 50 years latler, I don’t remember the exact circumstances or the chain of particulars on how we came up with what we started to do that Spring.
 
The first step was the hunt.
 
Our prey were the moths.  We used bath towels as our weapon of choice. We had a nearby ball field as the best hunting ground.   We would kill about 25 moths and put them in a cardboard shoe box.  One night we killed 100 moths.
 
The second step was to find an ant hole.
 
Yes, ant hole…. We would find an ant hole and sit down on the grass near it. Out of the shoe box would come one dead moth. We would place it next to ant hole.
 
At the entrance of the ant hole would be 2 guard ants.  They would spot the dead moth. They headed down the hole.  Out came hundreds of ants.
 
I can still picture the scene some 50 years later.
 
They would drag the moth down the hole.  What a scene. To them it must have been like dragging a 747 into a hanger or an elephant down into a cellar.
 
Then we would proceed to put moth 2,3, 4, 5 to 25 at the hole.  They never gave up.  They took all we could give them.
 
There’s a story here – but I’ve never mentioned this in a sermon. Hey, I wouldn’t want to be thought to be that strange. Then again, it might make a good sermon on Proverbs 6: 6-11.
 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022