CHAPTER VII
The Ants Go Milking
“You know,” said Dick, as the boys threw themselves down at the side of the mound and looked at it with an entirely new interest, “if these were African ants, you wouldn’t be taking any such liberties with them. Instead of hanging around this mound you would be running away like all possessed. And if you didn’t make tracks in a hurry the only thing left here would be your skeleton picked as clean as the one you saw the other day in old Dr. Sanford’s office.”
“What?” cried Jim, “do you mean to say that I would run away from a little thing like an ant. Not on your life, I wouldn’t.”
“Let’s see,” said Dick, “you’d run away from a boa-constrictor, wouldn’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t,” retorted Jim.
“Well, if you’d run away from the boa-constrictor, and he’d run away from the ants, where do you get any license to face the ants.”
“Do you mean to say that those monster snakes are afraid of such tiny things?”
“I should say they were,” replied Dick, “the ants go from place to place through the great African forest in countless numbers, millions at a time, a regular army of them. Nothing can stand before them. They strip every shrub, eat every blade of grass. They swarm over every living thing they find in their way. Sometimes they come across a snake unawares, and climb all over him. He squirms and twists and rushes away, trying to brush them off, against the bushes. At last he turns and bites frantically, but they never let up. They actually eat him alive, and in less than ten minutes they pass on leaving his bones picked clean as a whistle. The natives take their wives and children and flee for their lives whenever they see an army of ants approaching.”
“But that, of course, has nothing to do with these little American neighbors of ours. They are perfectly harmless and though they are fierce scrappers among themselves, inflict no injury on any one else. And there is nothing in the whole animal or insect world, except perhaps the bees, that have a society and government so much like that of men.”