"Anyway," Kenzie said. "The more we worked out the vocabulary code, the more the star signals began to fit right into it. So we decided to break up the thing, and forget all about ants. Honest Chief, you'll never hear me mention the word again."
"Termites either," Pringle chimed in.
"But I still don't understand," the Chief complained. "It still all sounds marvelous. I just don't understand."
"Draw him a picture," Pringle said disgustedly.
"Okay," Kenzie acceded. "How many years would you say ants have been on earth, Chief?"
"Oh, I don't know," the Chief answered. "Quite a few, I'd say."
"Yeah," Kenzie said drily. "Quite a few. At least a million. Unchanged. A perfect life form with a perfect civilization. So perfect, nature hasn't seen any need to change them for a million years."
"So what?" the Chief asked. "They're nothing. We come along and make them do nip ups."
"Yeah," Kenzie was bitter again. "We humans go around talking about how brave and smart we are. How someday we might even get so smart we'll contact other intelligent races on other worlds. Yeah, we're smart. You know those star radiations?"
"That's not my specialty, you know," the Chief answered cautiously.