Tried With Fire

This sounds like the badly translated title of a Japanese B movie, but this is what happened to my fiber optic internet service today. I lost internet mid-morning. Everything had been fine until then. I checked the outside unit and it seemed to be in order. Then I noticed that the "Internet" light on the router was red. I called Verizon. They diagnosed what they could remotely and then sent some technicians to check it out. The router had been replaced before so I figured that was the most likely solution. It turns out that very, very large black ants had infiltrated the fiber optic cable box on the telephone pole. The technician said when he opened the box, "Really big, black ants started pouring out." Ewwwwww! He then said they had eaten through the cable. Thinking it was only one spot, he thought they could splice it. As they began to pull the cable out of the box, it came out in little bits and pieces. Who knows how long they've been dining on the cable? I g...

I've had a couple of object lessons on sin from the animal kingdom. Lesson #1: We had a recent infestation of sugar ants around the kitchen sink. To get rid of them, I put out an insecticide called, Terro. It is a thick syrupy fluid containing borax. The ants were attracted to the sweet syrup. They eat it, take it back to the colony, and then die. It works very well. For some reason, this reminded me of sin. Sin disquises itself to be a "delight to the eyes and good for food". Those poor ants gorged themselves and even shared it with their family and friends. Everyone was enjoying it, everyone was doing it, so what harm can be in that? From appearances it was good for them but in reality it was poison. They were all dead in two days. Lesson #2: I always thought that our bunny, Lizzy, was relatively smart. However, in some things she is really stupid. She will eat the carpet in her condo as well as chew on plastic. Here are two substances that do not bear any resemblance t...