Soldier Ant 

He doesn't post as often as I'd like (I know, I know—pot kettle black) but when he does, boy does John Tolva have a way with a phrase:

Living in a house with three small children, I ponder silence as an abstraction, without empirical evidence. If nature abhors a vacuum, children abhor noiselessness. It’s instinctual, the reptile cortex responding to a threat of nothingness. Clear a space of quiet in my home and some child will yelp for no good reason. Like dangling meat in front of an animal that’s just eaten. It’ll still lunge.