The Grasshoppper and the Ant

Do you remember the tale of the grasshoppper and the ants? The grasshopper spent all summer playing his fiddle and goofing off and neglecting to prepare for the winter. Meanwhile the ants were industriously storing food and making preperations for the lean winter ahead. The end of the tale shows the ant taking in the grasshopper for the winter and sharing his warm home and food with him.

This story picks up where that one ends.

Suppose for a second that the Ant had a daughter and that daughter fell hard for the Grasshopper. Now no self respecting Ant would want thier daughter to marry such a shiftless Grasshopper! No sirree why Ants are some of the hardest working animals in the animal kingdom and they are darn proud of it! So what happens when an Ant falls in love with and marries a Grasshopper?

Mrs. Anita Ant-Grasshopper was climbing the large hill up to the apartment complex laundry mat with about a months worth of laundry on her back when she thought to herself, for the one millionth time, how unfair it was that she always seemed to be doing the brunt of the work in her marriage.
"That shiftless worthless Grasshopper is out playing his fiddle for perfect strangers and claiming it's work while I'm stuck doing all the manual labor! It's so unfair! I go to a real job and bring home a real paycheck and provide health insurance for our family and I get to come home to what?? A filthy, stinky, house because he's tired from "working" all night! Ha! Work my foot! He's just a lazy Grasshopper! I really wish I would have listened to my dad about marrying him."

Mrs. Anita Ant-Grasshopper had always considered herself a very forward thinking ant. She even chose to keep her own last name and to simply hyphenate it with that of her husbands. She was so modern that she didn't hold with the outdated notion that species should only marry within thier own species so when Mr. Ess-Loth Grasshopper came to stay with them for the winter she saw no good reason why she should not pursue him as a mate. When other eligible ants came to call on Anita during the winter she was quick to dismiss them as work-a-holics, or boring middle men and wage slaves. In her youth she simply could not understand or appreciate the beauty of a job well done or the dedication it took to keep the colony going. She saw only the day in day out drudgery of her own simple ant life and Mr. Grasshopper brought so much life and fun and color into her fathers home that she could not help but become captivated by it all. Really when you look at it from that perspective is it any wonder Anita fell so hard for the charming, outgoing, Grasshopper?

One could surmise that the Grasshopper saw an opportunity to spend the rest of his days and nights doing what he did best; play the fiddle and enjoy the spotlight. You could probably come up with a whole host of psychological reasons why the Grasshopper was pathologically lazy. Perhaps his mother never took the time to teach him to be self sufficient, or maybe he was traumatized by the cleaning products when he was young. Who knows for sure but one thing is certain the Grasshopper would work harder to get out of work than he would to just simply do the chore in the first place.

At first thier marriage was great. Anita was content follow wherever her husband should go and she did enjoy the travel. It was perhaps the first time in her young life that she had ever left the anthill and she was enthralled with the kaleidescope of colors and sounds and tastes that the wide world had to offer. Yes sir it was a very happy marriage in the begining but like many of lifes adventures there came a time when trouble showed up.

This particular event was at first recieved with joy for Mrs. Anita Ant-Grasshopper was expecting her first little one. Mr. Grasshopper was joyful if a bit apprehensive. He knew the arrival of this child would put a damper on his travels and frivolity. Mr. Grasshopper was fond of quoting his mother in times like these and saw fit to do so again when his wife began to make plans to settle down and get busy with the business of providing for a family.
"Children are messy and loud my dear are you sure you're ready for this?" said Mr.Grasshopper one night.

"Well dear ready or not this one is coming and we need to start the preperations." said Mrs. Anita Ant-Grasshopper.

"I'm afraid i'm not much good at preperations dear. Why don't you make a list of things you need me to do and I'll just get started on those as soon as I have some free time".

"Yes dear that would be lovely I'll begin making the list now".

Little did Mrs. Anita Ant-Grasshopper know that this was to be the beginning of a very rough road in her marriage. From that night on Mr. Grasshopper always had an excuse for why something on the list never got done. He convientantly managed to be at work or on the way to work or too tired from work to be of any use to his very pregnant wife. At first Anita thought there was plenty of time to prepare so she let things lie as they were but as the time for the new arrival came closer and the excuses more prevelant Anita began to stress. She began to worry if everything would be all right; would everything be done in time, and would her husband finally follow through on his promises?

Sadly for Anita her husband proved to be every inch the Grasshopper he was and his excuses simply piled up as he twisted and wormed his way out of every promise he made her. At this time Anita began to see her future in a very different light. Instead of warm night spent by the fire in wedded family bliss she saw herself and her little one cast out into the cold without a home or food. Anita began to do what her ant family had always taught her, she began to pray and work. She realized if her and her child were to make she would have to shoulder the load. Anita was prepared to do just that! After all she was an ANT and they are hardest working animals in the animal kingdom and proud of it!

Anita got a nice job at the local ant farm counting grains of rice. It was a rather boring job but it paid the bills and kept her and her young one fed and with a roof over thier heads. After Anita had been at her job for a little over a year her husband was let go from his "job" and took his sweet time finding another one. Of course every job Mr. EssLoth Grasshopper took was a low-paying job that would be garunteed to interfere with his family life and keep him off the hook of any type of family responsability and in this way he was able to keep up the pretense of a good provider for a family while actually doing nothing of the sort.

This brings us to the end of our story for you see this cycle of the Grasshoppers continued unabated for many years. Anita would grumble and gripe and complain about the lack of support she was getting from her husband and he in turn would complain about the long hours of his job that kept him too tired to support his wife. Some would say the moral of the story is that species should not inter-marry, other would say that the moral is to not be unevenly yokes, and still others would say that that's the price of feminism in today's society. I am the teller of this tale and I say the moral is whatever you find between the lines.