An Ant Story

This past summer while working around my yard I noticed something moving along the ground that caught my attention, it turned out to be a Red harvester ant carrying a very large seed pod of sort that just amazed me.

This ant struggled relentlessly with this seed pod getting it to its nest, always moving in the same direction, dragging, pushing and going around all kinds of obstacles all by its self. I could only wonder for the amount of hard work for this seed pod that it must be a delicious contribution.

The ant hill was still more than about three feet away, but it must seem like miles to the ant. Again I could only imagine how far this ant must to have traveled already with this seed pod to arrive where it was now. It must have been a long way, since there were no other seed pods like it in the area.

I left the ant alone to continue with my own yard work. Before long I found myself back in the same general area and was struck with the notion to see the ants progress and also wonder how on earth it was going to get that large seed pod down the ant hole so I went over to check on it.

My timing was perfect to see this ant arriving at the ant hold and attempting to drag the large seed pod down into it. As the ant tried desperately to get the pod down into the hold its action seemed to have set off an alarm and other ants began running out of the hole and swarming all over the seed pod. Within seconds all the ants began moving the large seed pod away from the hole only to deposit it along with other debris at the edge of their clearing and then they all returned to normal.


In a way it was both sad and funny to observe all the long hard work this ant has done in getting this seed pod to its nest with the only end result that none of the other ants wanted anything to do with it.


(I tend to think that there must be a good or not moral story to this)

OMG I just love this story! And it's funny! (But I feel also bad for that poor ant who toiled for what must have felt like hours to her/him, only to have the seed pod taken away.)

Maybe he was a rookie ant and was trying to impress her neighbours, and they showed her in a very direct way that he kind of got it wrong!

Anyhoo, loved the story! I am so moved that you took the time to notice the tiny life that thrives at our feet, that so many of us don't notice! So cool!

[GoldenLioness]

aw this made me chuckle inside :)

[Saggi]

What if they took him in, made him a cup of tea and bashed out what they had to do to accommodate his seed pod?

What appears to go on overground is not necessarily what goes on underground

Love and hugs

Jo

XxXx

[Tobi]

This was funny. But poor old ant after all that hard work. Maybe that ant was a newbie....maybe the seed pod was so special it had to be put outside for a while for some reason (a bit like we cool cans of beer in a stream....) I bought a can of beer the other day, was about to take it inside, then left it out in the garden to cool while I took a walk