Antipathy

There’s an ant in my laptop. No, really. I’m not one of those people who believes that little gnomes (and ants) live inside their computer, crunching the numbers and making the wheels go around. Despite all the jokes about crunching carrot noises and lighting a match to stick in the side so that the gnomes can make their tea (because gnomes with tea work more happily than gnomes without tea).

So here I was, minding my own business in the garden, when Mr. Ant crawled onto the laptop and started running around on the keyboard. I tried to brush him off, but that didn’t work, so I took a deep breath and blew a big puff … upon which he popped under the 'F' key and has not been seen since.

I sat and looked at it for a while, thinking he would soon notice his mistake and pop back out again. No ant. So I turned it over a shook it gently. Three sandwich crumbs: no ant.

Should I be worried about this? Clearly, judging by the crumbs, there's plenty for him to eat in there. Does this count as a sort of physical computer virus with the potential to do great harm later, like shrapnel? With every keystroke, am I possibly squishing him, leaving dead ant to fester and destroy my computer?

Oh deary me…