Insect Stories

by Vernon L. Kellogg

But Mary has found something. She had turned over a little flattish stone and under it was—life! Living things disturbed in their work, their play, their laying up of riches, their care of their children; little animate creatures revealed in all the intimacies of their housekeeping and daily life.

But they didn't lose their presence of mind, these active, knowing little ants, when the Catastrophe came. There was work to be done at once and wisely. First, the saving of the children; and so in the moment that passed between Mary's overturning of the stone and our immediate shifting into comfortable position on our stomachs, head in hands, for watching, half of the racing workers had each a little white parcel in its jaws and was speeding with it along the galleries toward the underground chambers.

"Ants' eggs," said Mary.

"No," said I. "That's a popular delusion. These little white things are not ants' eggs, but ants' babies. They are the already hatched and partly grown young ants, the larvæ and pupæ, which are so well looked after by the nurse ants. For these young ants are quite helpless, like young bees in the brood-cells in a honey-bee hive. And they have to be fed chewed food, and as they have no legs and so can't walk, they have to be carried from the cool dark nurseries up into the warmer lighter chambers for air and heat every day almost, and then carried back down again. See how gently the nurse ant holds this baby in its jaws; jaws that are sharp and strong and that can bite fiercely and hold on grimly in battle."

And I hand Mary my little pocket-lens through which she tries to look with both eyes at once. She could, of course, if she would keep her blessed eyes far enough away, but as she persists in holding the glass at the tip of her nose as she has seen me do, and as she cannot shut one eye and keep the other open, as I can, and have done now so many years that I have wrinkles all round the shut-up eye, why, she makes bad work of it. So she hands back the lens with a polite "thank you," and sticks to her own keen unaided eyes. And sees more than I do!

For in the next breath she cries, with a little note of triumph in her voice: "But some of the ant babies are walking. See there! And you said they have no legs. I can see them; little stumpy blackish legs sticking out from their soft white body! And some of the ants are carrying these babies with legs; I can see them!"

I squirm around nearer Mary. True enough there are some little white chubby creatures walking slowly around in the narrow runways. But I know they cannot be ant larvæ. For ant larvæ have no legs and simply can't walk. What are they? I get out the little pocket-lens. And the mystery is solved. They are the "ant-cattle," the curious little mealy-bugs that many kinds of ants bring into their nests and take care of for the sake of getting from them a constant supply of "honey-dew." This "honey-dew" which the mealy-bugs make and give off from their bodies is a sweetish syrupy fluid of which almost all ants, even those most fiercely carnivorous, are very fond. And as the mealy-bugs and plant-lice that make the honey-dew are quite defenceless, soft-bodied, mostly wingless and rather sedentary insects, the bright-witted ants establish colonies, or "herds," of them in their nests, or visit and protect colonies of them living on plants near the ant-nest. Some kinds of ants even build earthen "sheds," or tents, over groups of honey-dew insects on plant-stems. The mealy-bugs are white because they cover their soft little bodies with delicate threads or flakes of glistening white wax which they make in their bodies and pour out through tiny openings in the skin.

We watch the busy, excited ants until they have carried all their babies and cattle down into the underground nursery chambers, out of harm's way. Then we put the stone carefully back in place, and roll back again to where we can watch the wonderful mountains in the west. The redwood-fringed crest stands so sharply out against the sky-line that we really can distinguish every tree that lifts its head above the crest, although they are several miles away from us. These great trees, which are the giants' jagged spears, are one hundred and fifty feet high, some of them, and as big around at the base as one of the massive columns in the Cologne Cathedral.

Finally I say, rather lazily, "Mary, shall I tell you about the special way the clever little brown ant of the Illinois corn-fields takes care of its cattle?"