The Helpless Helpers
I march meaningfully towards the new ant nest in progress. Crawling through the heaps and piles of leaves, twigs, and pine-needles, I finally reach a hole in the soil and start digging through. Tunneling underground through the dry dirt, I come across the food chamber in our new home. A home where humans won’t find us and kill us, like last time when they invaded. In it, hundreds of ants are wandering around, working hard to provide for everyone in this new place.
But as I look around, I notice that there isn’t much food in our supply. Without food, in our nest, we simply cannot survive.
But luckily, we have decided to place our new home right next to a thriving vegetable garden patch. It has seed-producing plants with easy access. We can just stroll right into the garden, get some seeds for food, and bring them back to our home.
I follow a bunch of other ants back through the tunnel where I came from, and we head toward the vegetable garden. We spot some sunflower seeds. We easily lift them onto our backs and start carrying them back to the hole, where we will store them in our food chamber for safe-keeping.
As we crawl back home, some of the seeds fall back into the soil. But it’s alright, because once they root into the new fertile soil, the seed will sprout and they will grow into new plants. This means a more nutritious and bigger vegetable garden for the humans, and more food for us. It’s a win-win!
As we make our way back into the tunnel and head towards the food chamber, we store the seeds in there. A large amount of the seeds go inside our nest, making it accessible for our whole colony. It also keeps the seeds safe from any other predators. The remaining amount of seeds goes in storage holes near our nest sites.
When dinner time comes, we go to the food chamber and feast on our collection of seeds. We celebrate the move into our new home and the gaining of all this delicious food. Afterwards, some of the scraps and waste are left behind in the soil, but we don’t bother to clean them up because they will fertilize it and make it a better area for plants and the environment as a whole.
Months later. . .
We rest in our chamber wondering what to do. There is no more food in our colony or in the vegetable garden. The owners of the garden must have forgotten to water the precious plants. It’s almost as if there was a drought in the area, because the vegetable garden died out due to no water and the intense heat. We have been left with no plants, which means no seeds, which means no source of food.
We have no choice but to move our home into the house. Where the humans are. Their territory is scary, and we all remember what happened last time, but it's the only possibility of surviving. There has to be some types of other insects living in there that we can feast on. So it’s settled, we will move into the house.
Groups and groups of ants evacuate our beloved ant nest that has served us so well the past few weeks. We crawl quickly and make our way towards the huge beige house. The window is open, practically welcoming us into the home. We crawl through it, hundreds and hundreds of ants, skimming along the edge of the wall and towards a crack. We search the home, looking for any type of bug that we could eat for food. But then, in the cracks of the wall, we find that there are termites.
This house is infested with termites.
Gathering up, we decide to gang up on the termites and feast on them for our source of food.
If anything, we will be doing the residents of this house a favor. The termites will do nothing good for them, and will eat away at their house and infect it, making it an unsafe place to live in.
But just as we’re about to dig in, a mist of Raid swarms around the air and through the cracks. It consumes me and I try to make my escape and crawl back towards the window. But there’s no use.
The humans have found us. They have killed us. Once again.
I march meaningfully towards the new ant nest in progress. Crawling through the heaps and piles of leaves, twigs, and pine-needles, I finally reach a hole in the soil and start digging through. Tunneling underground through the dry dirt, I come across the food chamber in our new home. A home where humans won’t find us and kill us, like last time when they invaded. In it, hundreds of ants are wandering around, working hard to provide for everyone in this new place.
But as I look around, I notice that there isn’t much food in our supply. Without food, in our nest, we simply cannot survive.
But luckily, we have decided to place our new home right next to a thriving vegetable garden patch. It has seed-producing plants with easy access. We can just stroll right into the garden, get some seeds for food, and bring them back to our home.
I follow a bunch of other ants back through the tunnel where I came from, and we head toward the vegetable garden. We spot some sunflower seeds. We easily lift them onto our backs and start carrying them back to the hole, where we will store them in our food chamber for safe-keeping.
As we crawl back home, some of the seeds fall back into the soil. But it’s alright, because once they root into the new fertile soil, the seed will sprout and they will grow into new plants. This means a more nutritious and bigger vegetable garden for the humans, and more food for us. It’s a win-win!
As we make our way back into the tunnel and head towards the food chamber, we store the seeds in there. A large amount of the seeds go inside our nest, making it accessible for our whole colony. It also keeps the seeds safe from any other predators. The remaining amount of seeds goes in storage holes near our nest sites.
When dinner time comes, we go to the food chamber and feast on our collection of seeds. We celebrate the move into our new home and the gaining of all this delicious food. Afterwards, some of the scraps and waste are left behind in the soil, but we don’t bother to clean them up because they will fertilize it and make it a better area for plants and the environment as a whole.
Months later. . .
We rest in our chamber wondering what to do. There is no more food in our colony or in the vegetable garden. The owners of the garden must have forgotten to water the precious plants. It’s almost as if there was a drought in the area, because the vegetable garden died out due to no water and the intense heat. We have been left with no plants, which means no seeds, which means no source of food.
We have no choice but to move our home into the house. Where the humans are. Their territory is scary, and we all remember what happened last time, but it's the only possibility of surviving. There has to be some types of other insects living in there that we can feast on. So it’s settled, we will move into the house.
Groups and groups of ants evacuate our beloved ant nest that has served us so well the past few weeks. We crawl quickly and make our way towards the huge beige house. The window is open, practically welcoming us into the home. We crawl through it, hundreds and hundreds of ants, skimming along the edge of the wall and towards a crack. We search the home, looking for any type of bug that we could eat for food. But then, in the cracks of the wall, we find that there are termites.
This house is infested with termites.
Gathering up, we decide to gang up on the termites and feast on them for our source of food.
If anything, we will be doing the residents of this house a favor. The termites will do nothing good for them, and will eat away at their house and infect it, making it an unsafe place to live in.
But just as we’re about to dig in, a mist of Raid swarms around the air and through the cracks. It consumes me and I try to make my escape and crawl back towards the window. But there’s no use.
The humans have found us. They have killed us. Once again.
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