Today I was moving a lumber stack.\u00a0 Moving from an informal stack of old barn wood.\u00a0 Very untidy.\u00a0 Not at all like my stacks of furniture grade lumber.<\/p>\n
![\"ant](\"http:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3703\/9353607832_032d6158f0_o_d.jpg\")
I was working steadily and pulled up a board to find, laying in the gap between two boards below the one I had in my hands, a fair sized copper head.\u00a0 I tossed the board I held aside and looked around for weaponry.\u00a0 Fortunately it was quite early in the morning; cool, and the snake had not yet had its coffee.\u00a0 I dispatched it easily and with little fuss.\u00a0 Had it been later in the morning, things might not have gone so well.<\/p>\n
After what seemed like eight hours of pulling sodden boards out of the pile, sweeping off the fungus and mildew and beetle larvae, then carrying the boards to the other end of the lumber yard, around a tree and up a hill to the new stack (although in reality it was probably only an hour and a half) I encountered another snake.<\/p>\n
A King Snake this time.\u00a0 Just a small one.\u00a0 It had crawled in to feed on an enormous ant colony that had set up housekeeping between the layers of this lumber stack.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
King snakes are amicable fellows once you get to know them, so I allowed him to escape.\u00a0 He disappeared between a pair of lumber stacks near where I was working.\u00a0 I caught a glimpse of motion underneath one of those stacks, and stepped closer for a better look.\u00a0 I caught sight of the tail of another snake slithering in under that pile.\u00a0 At first I thought it was a coral snake, but they\u2019re not common here. I decided it was in fact a baby Copperhead whose banding and bow-ties had not yet developed.<\/p>\n
There wasn\u2019t anything I could do about that one. But I am thinking that the next time we\u2019re in Tractor Supply we might want to pick up a jug of snake repellent.\u00a0 All this is going on in very close proximity to my workshop and is in the area where our dogs like to play during the day.\u00a0 I\u2019d hate for any of them to get curious and end up with a snoot full of snake venom.<\/p>\n
I watched the ant colony for a while.\u00a0 It was very large: spanning three planks wide and turned out to occupy the spaces between 4 layers of boards.\u00a0 And they thought they were having a bad day when the snake showed up!\u00a0 I could just see it in my mind\u2019s eye:<\/p>\n
It was an average day in The Colony: hunters had gone off through the passages to where the beetle grubs grazed on rotting wood.\u00a0 They would kill one or two from this herd, tear up the carcasses and bring the pieces back to feed The Colony.\u00a0 Nurses scampered around, tending the tens of thousands of egg cases.\u00a0 Workers cleared passages, removed refuse and brought in fresh supplies.\u00a0 They all toiled complacently in their snug, warm, moist domain.<\/em><\/p>\n Suddenly alarm pheromones are passed into the nest: enemy invades!<\/em><\/p>\n The enormous head of a great serpent forced it way into the nursery and began snapping up egg cases, pupae and nurses alike.\u00a0 Soldiers appeared and attacked the vile serpent, but to no avail; most were eaten as well.\u00a0 The soldiers could do little against the great beast\u2019s armored head.<\/em><\/p>\n New orders went out: \u201cMove the children to another chamber.\u00a0 Hurry!\u201d\u00a0 And nurses began clutching eggs and scurrying through the cavity, into cracks and out into new cavities.\u00a0 Back again for another egg.\u00a0 And again.\u00a0 The Beast must not eat all the children!<\/em><\/p>\n Suddenly their world is rent open, the top is ripped away, leaving the distressed cavern awash in sunlight and flooded with fresh air.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cExtreme alarm! \u00a0Extreme Alarm!\u201d All members of The Colony are called in to help move the egg cases down to lower levels, to safety, away from the burning light and drying wind.\u00a0 The colony works feverishly.\u00a0 At least this disaster caused the serpent to flee.<\/em><\/p>\n Unknown to the main colony, many loyal ants were clinging to the board that was lifted away to expose The Colony.\u00a0 Now fully exposed, the board is swept clean, tossing, rolling and crushing ants and egg cases.\u00a0 Clearing entire chambers in just moments.\u00a0 The survivors scramble for cover in the dirt and grass below.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Antony Insectus, leader of a squad clinging to the removed portion of The Colony, hatches a plan to attack the enormous entity that appears to be responsible for this devastation.\u00a0 As he organizes his squad to carry out the plan his immediate superior countermands his orders and directs them back to The Colony to aid in rescuing the pupae.\u00a0 “We must save the children!”<\/em><\/p>\n Just as they enter the colony, another section of their world is sliced out and carried away.\u00a0 What horror!\u00a0 The workers wail, the nurses cry, attendants moan, \u201cWhere is the Queen? What has become of our Queen?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Again and again the attack comes.\u00a0 Huge portions of The Colony simply cease to exist.\u00a0 The death toll is enormous.\u00a0 Eventually their entire world is ripped to shreds and is gone.\u00a0 The handful who survived are scrabbling between blades of grass, some carrying a pupae, some seeking shelter for the survivors.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n A leader emerges and begins dabbing her abdomen to the ground, \u201cCome this way, come this way.\u00a0 We will rebuild.\u00a0 We will begin again with what we have saved.\u00a0 No time to wail now.\u00a0 We will morn when we have found safety for these remaining children.\u00a0 Come this way\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n And I; The Destructor of Worlds, carry my piece of lumber to the new pile and slide the plank into place.\u00a0 As I turn to go for another, I wonder; how would we react if our world were disemboweled as that of those ants just was?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today I was moving a lumber stack. Moving from an informal stack of old barn wood. Very untidy. Not at all like my stacks of furniture grade lumber. I was working steadily and pulled up a board to find, laying in the gap between two boards below the one I had in my hands, a … Continue reading “Ant Apocalypse”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,7],"tags":[19,28],"class_list":["post-5337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative","category-life","tag-adventures","tag-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21538,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5337\/revisions\/21538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}