A NIGHT OF TERROR

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 14

A NIGHT OF TERROR

RAIDED BY RED DRIVER ANTS.

Truth is invariably stranger than fiction. By the'courtesy of the secretary of the British Entomological Society, the "Daily News" it able to quote the following description of the horrors of ar ant raid in Tanganyika territory. Mr. Loveridfce, the writer of the letter, has a house near Kilosa,' and on 3rd July he discovered that he was being raided by siafu, or red driver ants. These ants are raiders, they seek their prey by scent, as they are entirely blind. The soldier of the species js distinguished by its enormous square head and powerful jaws. "At 8 a ra.," writes Mr. Loveridge, "we were bring invaded' by siafu, who were entering the stonework of the base of the house at half a dozen different points.- Beetles were flying before th© advancing h6sts with one or more of the red furies attached to their nusd legs. Wretched cHckets and email grashoppers were being dragged off, feebly waving the one or two legs that remained to them. My P 6t jumping spid--ers cleared for their lives with prodigious leaps. . . . Soldier sentries Wer* sta> turned at intervals along the lines of th# column waiting with tilt forepart of tne body raised and widely-open ia\vs tor any disturbers." Mr. Loveridp* SWe& Lk the columns ™ heaps, cremated them with paraffin, put paper soaked with prusic acid in their holes, and believed that he had stopp«d tne raid. But at 9 p.m. that wening he became conscious of a strange noise. The whitewashed walls of his bedroom wete a moving mass of ants; the sound we» made by the feet of ttie countless multitude. The raid continued the next day, and at 8 p.m. a stream of ante, «3x or eight ants wide, was seen goins straight up the verandah wall beneath the roof In spite of his placing the legs of his bedstead i n pans of water, tl» ants reached him. They threw a. bridtte composed of living ants across the waterpans over which the infantry columns crossed The invaders attached the net crocodiles, the tortoises, and killed a nest of young rats. "It made me shudder says the writer, 'to think of th* awful death scores of small creatures were-dying." He himself waa driyen ■Horn the house by ants ewarming ,m his ej?Si Jt softftelled tortoisfs suffered badly, one having its eyelids eaten. Hot ashes, cyanide powder, meat baits, anlhre were employed against the herd* but on 7th July the bested were horrified to see ants arriving in countlwss thousands m every direction from east and south. Thirty steady streams Cc moving on the houses. Graa» was fired in their tracks, and they were drivenTnovei. JNot a single siafu was found m the house, though they could he hlTrd £ th ß dry grass 30ft away. "Th* dbci^ hne ? nd organisation of the al -my," sa ?s Mr LovendW'were beyond-reproach^