Consider her ways...

PROVERBS VI, 6

"Small as it is, this ant stings most wickedly"

Things start by a nest of Solenopses coming into being some distance from a nest of (say) Wood ants. The Solenopses increase and soon the little tunnels of the their nest are close to the great galleries and chambers of the Wood ants.

To get a proper view of what happens now it is necessary to anthropomorphic and compare this particular nest of Wood ants with a family of human beings. The idea is not original, for the same comparison was made by Lord Avebury.

The family of human beings we picture is a large one, with many children, nurses and servants, and it lives in a huge rambling house. It has lived in this house for generations and nothing has ever gone wrong. Then, one day, holes about eighteen inches in diameter begin to appear in the walls and wainscoting of the various rooms and passage-ways. These are filled in by the servants, but others appear. Later on a nurse reports that one of the children is missing. A day later three more children have disappeared.

Let us keep watch over one of those holes. In the dead of night (for it is always dark in this house) a band of gnomes crawl out and tip-toe swiftly to a bedroom, where they steal up to one of the cots. Silently they pull the blankets back, draw little knives, , and cut the child into ragged hunks of meat. Then, each carrying a grisly joint, they hurry off and vanish into the hole.

The next night a nurse sees the last of a band of gnomes going back into the hole. She cries in alarm. Others hasten up. But what can they do? A human being cannot get into a hole eighteen inches in diameter and travel a hundred yards or more along a tunnel of the same width. They may try to enlarge the hole, but it avails them nothing. All they hear is the mocking laughter of the gnomes.

They watch the children very carefully after this but ther are many children and they cannot watch all of them all of the time. Besides, they have their own work to do. The children continue to disappear. Sometimes the gnomes are caught in the middle of their horrid work, or intercepted as they are running away. They fight like fiends then, and being armed with poisoned daggers, are dangerous creatures to tackle. Some are killed. It makes no difference: by now the the house is surrounded on all sides by countless tunnels crammed with gnomes whose favourite food is the blood and flesh of babies, and who are determined to have it.

-- John Crompton

Ways of the Ant

Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston

1954