KINFOLKS AT THE DESERTED CABIN
When I first
began to understand crow language correctly, there was an incident that
happened across the street in a log house that sits on the rise just above the
Weber River in Weber County, Ogden, Utah.
The log house has been empty ever since as long as I can remember. It
has a plank roof, nothing between the plank roof and a dirt floor, just one
room no more, no windows
There are big
red army ants inside and out. In the exuberantly dour understory, the spotted
ant bird is to stare at the dirt floor. If you don’t tuck in your pant legs As
soon as the ants start streaming across the room you know trouble is afoot on
many, many feet actually... You know this partly because 36 seconds after
stepping into the room you see a raiding column of female ants on the hunt for
prey, trailing behind or the male inceptions. Clearly this is not going to have
a happy ending. These are predatory ants fast numerous, and they are living the
purpose-driven life, the purpose being to kill some termites for lunch. Sure enough
within a few minutes a thousand termites bite the dust. Next up Soybean aphid
scouting. To protect against chiggers
and ticks, you will end up a color plate in the textbook of dermatology. At all
hours you can step into a swarm of the red army ants boiling out across the
floor and even underneath marching around.
Step back out of
the swarm, and start looking for the characteristic flitting and popping of the
thrush-size ant bird, listen for its vibrato peeee-ti peewee, because whenever
there are big red army ants out on a hunting raid, puckish Ant Birds are sure
to follow, they have good binoculars watching and recording insect with their
camera eyes making orphanage there after never seen in church crossing a
landscape life in a gutter can thrive in less than pristine urban water flows
and the Hornworm too which is exactly what it sounds like.. In the entry way a
horrifying number of parasitic wasp larvae, tiny translucent wormy thing tunnel
through the skin of their host, a tomato horn worm, a large, green caterpillar
that if it hadn’t been eaten from the inside out, would have grown up to be a
Carolina sphinx moth. No music is
necessary for all of this to ruin your lunch but the cheery Latin brass and
drums do enhance the pageantry of parasitic infection.
But if you
stumbled upon this site by mistake, of course, the availability of
exterminators might be comforting. The Ace Ext Company does promise same day
service. They skim off a percentage of the ant’ labor by snatching up
grasshoppers, beetles, and other leftovers of the predatory red ants. It’s the
reversal of the convention notion of parasites as being little, tacky things
that plague large poorly dressed hosts. Here the big vertebrates are being
killed off by insects a fraction of their size.
And the parasitic strategy is so irresistible that according to research
in the Bug journal the Spotted Ant Bird antics just may be taking it
professional all the way to the Hall Of Fame. Whereas the species has
traditionally opted for a mixed approach, filching from ant swarms and also
finding food on its own-makes it increasingly dependent on army ants to scare
up their every meal.
From the
beginning the cabin has had quirks, like an outhouse, a three setter with a
mini hole for a child, and a knot hole in the center of the roof where you
could dangle a hand down in it and scare the heck out of guests.
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S
To read more Karl Wallace short stories go to: karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
