Augmented Reality

So, first things first. I have to trim my nails. But they're already really short. I ask Pliny if toenails will do as well. He says the ants will probably like them better.

That's easy. Now I have a little handful of toenail parings, I need to find my ant hole. It's been raining a lot and the ants are underground. But later in the afternoon the sun comes out and I find a promising ant hole. I scatter my toenail parings near the hole and wait to see what happens.

An ant comes out and looks around. She goes back in. This is lucky really because I haven't made a proper plan to catch her yet. I run inside and find a glass. The ant emerges once again. This time she goes up to the biggest toenail clipping and starts to drag it towards the hole.

Quick as a flash, I drop the glass over the labouring ant, who is now my prisoner, along with a piece of toenail. Now all I have to do is extricate the toenail from the ant and the ant from the glass and then suspend the ant by some means or other around my neck.

A thought occurs to me. Does the ant have to be alive to effect a cure? I ask Pliny. He thinks it probably does. Otherwise, he says, the disease cannot be transferred to the ant.

What! I say. Does this poor ant have to take on my disease? Of coure it does, says Pliny, don't you know how sympathetic medicine works?

Well, I'm none too happy about it but I've gone too far to give up now. And my sore throat isn't really all that bad, I tell the ant. The ant looks at me as if to say, whatever, but you'll never take this toenail away from me.

So, to cut a long story short, I go out that evening to a lecture on Augmented Reality, of all things, wearing around my neck an angry little ant pendant that tickles and scratches and scrapes and nips, in a most distracting fashion, and I fail to learn anything useful.

Later Pliny tells me he's remembered that the ant cure is only good for malaria.