7.
ANTS.
My expertise on the subject of antomology is limit-
ed to the recognition that ants come red, or black,
or yellow; and that some are big and some small. Never
the less 1 have considerable regard for the little
creatures and it is just possible that they recognise
this fact.
Decades have passed since the July afternoon in
1945 when under a blazing Cypriot sun, I was basking
outside my billet and I observed a determined column
of half inch ants approaching my door across the rock
hard earth, about five deep in a seemingly endless
line. Somebody supplied me with a dispenser of a mag-
ical new powder called DDT and it was not long before
silent pandemonium prevailed, as the army routine fell
apart, though only for a spell.
Instinct in the horde allowed for redeployment, and
the final retreat, towards a colleague's billet over the
way, was a commendably disciplined affair. I was all
right Jack, but I do not know the end of the tale!
At 2.30pm on a really warm August afternoon in 1973,
I was basking again, not in Cyprus , but on the lawn
just a few feet from our dining room window when I
became aware of minute but intense disturbance in the
grass beside me. Small black ants erupted from an area
of less than a square foot, and amongst them half-
inch giants, with silvery wings attached, that were
tentatively twitching as if they were not adequate
for the job of flying.
The ants were milling around in great excitement
and some were seen to nudge and cajole their outsize
colleagues as if to give them encouragement to do what
must be done, until, one after another, they climbed
up an inch or so to the tip of a blade of grass, and,
in most cases, executed a sudden near-vertical take-
off into the blue, each in the same direction. There
was a minority group whose wings did not seem to have
attained sufficient strength, but my concentration
flagged and I was never certain what happened to them.