Note: I wrote this story a couple of days after I had visited two of the local cemeteries to check on the graves of ancestors of a woman in Montana who had asked me for information about her family here in the Town of Porter. THE SUGAR ANT When I first set off to take the pictures of the tombstones, I knew that some of the inscriptions were worn and I wanted to take along some flour to dust over the inscriptions so that it would bring out the carvings. Well, since my flour supply is pretty low, I thought I'd use powdered sugar instead--hey, I probably have a ten-year supply of it! I poured a generous amount of sugar into a clean plastic margarine tub, clamped the lid on it and off I went. Well, when I tried to apply the sugar onto the tombstone with a dry sponge, it just wouldn't stick and so, at least, I learned a lesson there. Flour works, powdered sugar doesn't. By the time I clamped the lid back onto the sugar container, I noticed an ant had already discovered the sugar treasure. Oh, well, let him be--I was going to have to throw out the sugar anyway. Well, it wasn't until yesterday that I got around to throwing out the sugar. When I removed the lid, I noticed that the ant was still there; however, he was dead. Now, what did he die of? Suffocation? Old age? Homesickness? Or did he die the way he always dreamed of--in a vast wonderful white world of delicious SUGAR?? Before I emptied the contents into the waste basket, I took a closer look at the ant and do you know what I saw? He had a great big smile on his face and a white mustache of pure powdered sugar on his upper lip! It was if he had died thinking, "What a way to go!!" Vee L. Housman August 3, 1997