FLOATING FEATHERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4220, 6 December 1939, Page 10

FLOATING FEATHERS

WORLDS AT WAR, (By H. G. Lamond.) W]ith no banners flying, no bands playing, soundless, yet grim in the intensity of rts silence, two worlds are at war. No quarter is given, none is asked; death is dealt out with fine impartiality while warring combatants seek to destroy, to kill, to slay, or to perish in the attempt. The members of two nests of ants have met in combat. Each nest is a little world in itself, self-controlled, governed by the laws which rule its population. One lot is the red meat ant; the other is that pestilential black fellow with the sting of searingiron, with the implacability of fate itself, and,if it has the power to think, with but one thought in its pin-point of a mind—The Job Must Be Done.

Goodness only knows what s’et those fellows at each other’s 'throats. Our world seemed big enough to give each of those smaller worlds whips of room in which to live their collective lives- Nothing may have started them; anything may have done it; it may have been a dispute over a bit of meat lying on the ground— a, dead atom, which any self-respecting eater of carrion Would despise; it might have been that two blustering fellows rubbed shoulders and jostled each othei* on a narrow track; possibly their respective queens woke with bad tempers—and as the queen thinks so do all members of her world adopt her outlook. Perhaps, again, it was a dispute over hunting territory,the rights to build a pad along a certain contour, the necessity of reducing the population of another world so that the survivors might live in greater comfort and ease.

Though the commencement may have been over some trivial cause the fight itself is desperate. The blacks out-number the reds by perhaps two to one; but what the reds lack in numbers is compensated for by their greater size and strength; and although the blacks are smaller there is nothing to choose between the combatants in the temper of their razor edged valour I The blacks may be a shade more dashing, though the others level that by their stolidity, their ability to take punishment, their refusal to yield. Wlhen what appears to be the wild mlelee of their engagement is analysed there is system in their war. At first glance they all appear to be fighting with a rush-in-and-grab lack of organisation that is appalling. Looking into it more closely, there are troops hurrying from the rear, winding along pads, weaving round grass tussocks, rushing in their eagerness to get to the fray. There are battalions in reserve immediately behind the fighting line, Those chaps on each side will wade in recklessly when the word appears to be passed to them, and though it would seem to be a rash statement, almost the watcher could swear they strengthen weak places and support bending lines.

And, as always, the ambulance is putting in good work. Those chaps are busy. They will tend their own wounded, finish the job of killing an opponent who is helpless, miix in when the call comes and take the part of combatants. Even though his world is at war, the ant seems to have a fine business brain; he is carting home the dead and dying. The wounded may be mended, though it’s doubtful; the dead can only be for purposes of cannibalism. If he is at war, at least he will try to make it a profitable undertaking. The reds are being forced back. For an hour, a day, a week previously it Would seem they have been in retreat, there are dead ants strewn along the ground for a hundred yards or more back over the area where the war has raged. It would seem the reds had an initial advantage—behind their lines dismembered bodies lie half churned in the dust and strewn wbout the roots and grasses.

One black warrior closes with a giant red. Another black engages the same ant from the other side. In that tangle of minute bodies, sometimes seen, occasionally hidden in the dust, only an outline of the fight is visible . They have closed, and, when an ant closes, he stays locked till death prises his jaws apart. At odd times even death itself cannot quench the ardour of the fellow who fights, and though his body may be squirming in the dust over there, his head and jaws remain clamped to his enemy.

When the red and the two blacks come into view again and settle down to their fight, one black can be seen holding to the red’s shoulders. 'With out doubt his intention is to add an other to the many thousands of odd legs which lie strewn about the field. He never completes his purpose. The red snaps down with a pecking motion, waves his mandibles, and throws away that which he has taken. The part which wriggles in the dust is the hinder half of the black. But his head stays Where his jaws had closed on his enemy. The red pecks again, picking that sticking vyce of a head from its grip, and he tosses that part aside. And even though that warrior, is dead by all the rules of War, his mandibles

snap, his jaws open and shut, and almost his eye seems to glare in its fury and pluck as he seeks something to grip with what is left of his life and body. The red props and wheels like a scrub bull. He waves his whiskers in the wind, and seeks his other opponent. But that other fellow has made good his assault; he is perched on top of the red chap’s withers, with his mandibles gripped about the scruff of his antagonist’s neck. He is in an unreachable position. He has his job to do, and he does it; he just sits there, immovable, paying no attention to anything outside that one particular job. The red fellows’ head drops forward. Though his legs fight for a footing it is obvious he is in distress, partly paralysed, at the end of his tether. His head rolls in a drunken motion, apparently bereft of directed action, and then the strategy of the black fellow’s move is shown —« the red’s head drops off and rolls away from the body in the dustAs that job is done the black climbs down from his perch, seems to dust his trousers, spit on his hands, looks about him, gets his bearings, and dives into the fight once more. And he has barely gone two strides when a giant red swoops down on him, picks him up bodily, holds him high, squeezes and throws two parts of the black’s body on each side of him I The war wages continuously. For every one which is killed a hundred new ones swing into battle. They may be directed by a master mind—they undoubtedly are and the source from which they draw their courage must be unlimited. The reds are being forced back. There is no retreat, no disorder, nothing other than a tightening of the ranks as they fall back on the nest which is their world, which shelters their queen, and which is the citadel in which they live and for which they 'will die.

And as the war enters the suburbs of the attacked world the last defence com.es up to meet the invaders. They are soldier ants—big fellows trained to fight, with claws like fiddler crabs, organised chaps who make death their living. They sweep up the holes, charge the blacks, tear them ui pieces, toss them aside, and bring disorder into their ranks. Those ants can fight. It is their business. Almost one could swear that fire glints from their eyes, that steam hisses from their nostrils, and that muscles bulge under their armour.

The blacks fall back before that irresistible onslaught. They know those soldiers will not follow them far from their own home; they also know their own trained troops will not comte to their assistance, being reserved solely for a last defence. They fall back steadily, leaving their dead behind them.

The war is over. Peace may have settled again on the two disturbed worlds, and, at least, each has a wellstocked larder on which it can draw while the combatants are recovering from their wounds.