One piece of enduring advice from ancient King Solomon is to go on fox-watch. I don’t mean watching Fox News, nor the whole fox-and-hound thing like British monarchs. Instead, we’re warned, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyard, our vineyards that are in bloom” (Song of Solomon 2:15).
For a long time, I thought that verse a bit strange. Then I learned it comes from the realities of farming grapes. In spring, fox and jackals sneak into the vineyards to burrow under the roots of the grapes, undermining the plant root system.
The context is Solomon’s love poem for this little maiden who has the king loopy-in-love with her. The common interpretation is this: don’t let anything undermine your marriage. Like, is the foot of the bed a magnet for his dirty laundry? Trap the complaint fox! Does she have enough shoes to open a store? Trap the gripe fox!
May I be so bold as to offer an alternative to the fox analogy? Drum roll: Bait the ants.
Unwelcomed, a gazillion sugar ants have moved in to taunt us. At first there were just a few, like the 12-man search party Moses sent to check out Canaan. Surely, like the Israelite spies, our ants saw giants (people) roaming around the kitchen. But this was a land of milk and honey. Or at least honey. Dried fruits in bags of trail mix. Friskies left in the cat’s dish. And breakfast cereal, which, even though supposedly oat-healthy, in small print admits to sugar in the manufacturing process. Cheers.
As soon as a few hundred more invaded, I battened down the hatches. Anything with a remote hint of sugar went in a canning jar. Plastic pour bins containing cereal got an extra seal with plastic wrap.
The kitchen started looking like a mine field with those little black disk ant baits. We loaded up on ant antidotes. My husband sprayed, powdered, and spread nuggets of disgusting stuff touted to send ants back to Ant-arctica. (Cue card: laugh.)
Every morning, we thumbed dozens of ants to smudged oblivion on the kitchen counters. The dried fruit armored against attack in canning jars seemed to be holding defense….until the morning my husband decided to go for a handful of his favorite trail mix.
Let’s just say as many ants as people at Chelsea’s wedding reception were having a gala among the nuts and dried fruits. I checked the lid. It was a one-inch turn from “tight.” Advance spies apparently figured out that they could crawl along the screw lines of the jar and enter the forbidden territory. Overnight, they were in full attack.
Well, I just dumped half a canning jar of trail mix into the garbage. It wasn’t worth trying to pick the ants out, no matter how much that stuff costs.
There’s got to be a lesson here, right? I think I found it in some notes I wrote in my Bible next to Solomon’s little-foxes verse. The great Bible teacher H.A. Ironside identified some spiritual foxes as:
*Carelessness
*Neglect of the Bible
*Neglect of prayer
*Neglect of fellowship with people of God
*Vanity, pride, envy, evil thinking, impurity
Each time we engage in one of those negative activities, it may seem a little thing. But like the ants in my kitchen, they’ll multiply until they make life miserable—for you and the ones you love.The defense mode? Each one’s opposite.
So, look to the ant (another Solomon saying, Proverbs 6:6). Better yet, I say, look forward to winter when they fade away for a long winter’s nap!
For a long time, I thought that verse a bit strange. Then I learned it comes from the realities of farming grapes. In spring, fox and jackals sneak into the vineyards to burrow under the roots of the grapes, undermining the plant root system.
The context is Solomon’s love poem for this little maiden who has the king loopy-in-love with her. The common interpretation is this: don’t let anything undermine your marriage. Like, is the foot of the bed a magnet for his dirty laundry? Trap the complaint fox! Does she have enough shoes to open a store? Trap the gripe fox!
May I be so bold as to offer an alternative to the fox analogy? Drum roll: Bait the ants.
Unwelcomed, a gazillion sugar ants have moved in to taunt us. At first there were just a few, like the 12-man search party Moses sent to check out Canaan. Surely, like the Israelite spies, our ants saw giants (people) roaming around the kitchen. But this was a land of milk and honey. Or at least honey. Dried fruits in bags of trail mix. Friskies left in the cat’s dish. And breakfast cereal, which, even though supposedly oat-healthy, in small print admits to sugar in the manufacturing process. Cheers.
As soon as a few hundred more invaded, I battened down the hatches. Anything with a remote hint of sugar went in a canning jar. Plastic pour bins containing cereal got an extra seal with plastic wrap.
The kitchen started looking like a mine field with those little black disk ant baits. We loaded up on ant antidotes. My husband sprayed, powdered, and spread nuggets of disgusting stuff touted to send ants back to Ant-arctica. (Cue card: laugh.)
Every morning, we thumbed dozens of ants to smudged oblivion on the kitchen counters. The dried fruit armored against attack in canning jars seemed to be holding defense….until the morning my husband decided to go for a handful of his favorite trail mix.
Let’s just say as many ants as people at Chelsea’s wedding reception were having a gala among the nuts and dried fruits. I checked the lid. It was a one-inch turn from “tight.” Advance spies apparently figured out that they could crawl along the screw lines of the jar and enter the forbidden territory. Overnight, they were in full attack.
Well, I just dumped half a canning jar of trail mix into the garbage. It wasn’t worth trying to pick the ants out, no matter how much that stuff costs.
There’s got to be a lesson here, right? I think I found it in some notes I wrote in my Bible next to Solomon’s little-foxes verse. The great Bible teacher H.A. Ironside identified some spiritual foxes as:
*Carelessness
*Neglect of the Bible
*Neglect of prayer
*Neglect of fellowship with people of God
*Vanity, pride, envy, evil thinking, impurity
Each time we engage in one of those negative activities, it may seem a little thing. But like the ants in my kitchen, they’ll multiply until they make life miserable—for you and the ones you love.The defense mode? Each one’s opposite.
So, look to the ant (another Solomon saying, Proverbs 6:6). Better yet, I say, look forward to winter when they fade away for a long winter’s nap!
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