There's a fantastic Soviet sci-fi novel that uses this same metaphor, Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers.

In the novel, aliens suddenly arrive on Earth and then leave after about one day. No one can really get a good look at them or what they're doing, they never interact with anyone, and then they're just gone. In the aftermath, people find that the sites they visited are littered with absolutely bizarre objects that don't seem to make physical sense, that the land and local geometry has been altered in surreal ways, and that in small pockets even the laws of physics seem to have changed. People who approach the visited areas go through baffling experiences -- maybe your dead friends return to life or maybe you suffer instant catastrophic brain damage, no way to predict. Liquids and dusts found at the sites are sold for fortunes.

Some people fear hostile invading aliens, others rejoice at benevolent advanced aliens bestowing gifts, others frame it in a religious context. But a main character offers the theory that gives the book its title -- that these aliens were just stopping on Earth during a travel, like you'd stop on a drive to have a roadside picnic, and we are just the ants picking over their spilt wine and discarded paper plates, so far below their level of existence that we couldn't possibly hope to comprehend them. They did not interact with humans on Earth the same way we wouldn't bother to interact with ants in a field.