The caterpillar was three times as long as the ant, and his body was more than twice as large round as the biggest part of the ant’s body.
“Ho! ho! Mr. Ant,” said I, “you needn’t think you’re going to be strong enough to drag that fellow very far.”
Why, it was about the same thing as if you or I should drag off a calf, which was kicking and struggling all the time; only that the calf hasn’t half so many legs to catch hold of things with as the caterpillar had.
Poor caterpillar! how he did try to get away! But the ant never gave him a second’s time to take a good grip of anything; and he was cunning enough, too, to drag him on his side, so that he couldn’t use his legs very well.
Up and down, and under and over stones and sticks; in and out of tufts of grass; up to the very top of the tallest blades, and then down again; over gravel and sand, and across bridges of pine needles from stone to stone; backward all the way ran that ant, dragging the caterpillar after him.
I watched him very closely, thinking, of course, he must be going toward his house. Presently he darted up the trunk of a pine tree.
“Dear me!” said I, “ants don’t live in trees! What does this mean?”
The bark of the tree was all broken and jagged, and full of seams twenty times as deep as the height of the ant’s body. But he didn’t mind; down one side and up the other he went.
They must have been awful chasms to him, and yet he never once stopped or went a bit slower. I had to watch the ant very closely, not to lose sight of him altogether.
I began to think that he was merely trying to kill the caterpillar; that, perhaps, he didn’t mean to eat him, after all. How did I know but some ants might hunt caterpillars, just as some men hunt deer, for fun, and not at all because they need food?