An ant tale of our times

Harry was a rather troubled ant. It seemed that the nest was under some kind of attack from an invisible threat. The queen ant had instructed everybody to stay in the nest except for those who had to go out and gather food. Some thought that the rulings from the queen had been disproportionate and expressed their dissent by flagrantly getting together in groups outside the nest, defying the wishes of the colony. This had caused for a clamping down of all the rules with guards now patrolling around to make sure that the decree was obeyed. Some ants were fearful, and they stockpiled food away from the main store. Something unheard of for ants in normal times, but panic had set in. Other ants just grumbled noisily from the deep recesses of the nest. They never voted for the queen so whatever she said or did, it was inevitably going to be wrong. “Surely my individual rights as an ant have been trampled”, they wailed. “We’ve all seen sickness like this before. This is a major overreaction”. Where others thought that the queen hadn’t gone far enough. “We have plenty of food here to last for years. Nobody should be going out at all for any reason”, they suggested. Harry knew that other nests had been decimated by this hidden danger. They had not taken the threat seriously enough until too late and had paid a heavy toll, with huge numbers of their colonies falling victim and dying an extremely unpleasant death. It had been told that they had inadvertently brought the threat back into their colony from contact with others on the outside. So, Harry recognised that obeying the queen’s edict was the sensible thing to do for the sake of the community. However, he had a dilemma. Unknown to his family, he had met an ant from another nest of whom he was particularly fond. Sally wasn’t like any other ant he’d ever met. She had a certain je ne sais quoi that always muddled him and made him feel lightheaded. He particularly liked the way that she used her middle legs to scratch the side of her head in an unaffected way when they chatted. Even though he was ostensibly a sensible ant, he was drawn to her in a way that sometimes made him feel reckless. And now his longing to see her had him in a quandary. Do what was needed for the good of the colony? Or follow his deepest desires and sneak his way over to her unseen and risk the wrath of the queen’s guards if he was caught? Quite the conundrum for Harry’s mind to ponder.

Harry had a couple of close friends who knew of his dilemma. Gus suggested that he put aside his personal feelings for the time being. “There’ll be plenty of time after this has all passed to hang out with her”, suggested Gus. While his musician friend Adam, who had more of a romantic streak in him, believed that perhaps love could conquer all. If he was extremely careful and planned well, perhaps he could organise a romantic rendezvous where he wouldn’t be caught and wouldn’t have the invisible threat attach itself to him endangering them all. Gus thought that Adam’s advice was foolhardy and misguided. “How can you put yourself above the health and safety of your friends and family? Your community? We’re all in this together and you could fuck it all up for everyone. Haven’t you seen the news? Don’t be such a selfish prick!”. Harry was a little put off by the aggression of Gus’s stance. Didn’t he understand how he was going crazy in solitude without her? He decided to ask Anne for her opinion. She was always level-headed and perhaps a woman could offer up a viewpoint that wasn’t so charged with anger.

Anne lived in one of the far-flung reaches of the nest, quite a way from where Harry lived. She had known about Harry’s thing for Sally for quite some time. She’d even met her last summer, back before all these troubles began when life seemed more carefree and easy. She had never really warmed to her though, feeling that Sally had an air that she was better than everybody else. And she came from a colony that had some different customs to theirs which made her feel uneasy. She didn’t consider herself racist but felt that each colony was better off sticking to their own. After all, this whole mess was said to have started out when one of the colonies had found and eaten some strange form of sticky liquid, causing a sickness that ravaged them and which spread through contact to other communities at a rapid rate. And who knew what the ants in Sally’s colony ate? She too suggested to Harry that he just stay home and wait until this was all over. In fact, maybe he’d be better off just to forget about her altogether.

Despite the misgivings of his friends, Harry was unperturbed. He decided to put it to Sally herself and see what she thought was the best course of action. Harry had worked out a way to tap his abdomen on the hard sand at the entrance of the nest in such a frequency that Sally could hear him and discern his voice from the deep recesses of her home. On hearing his call, she made her way to the hole at the top of her nest to see what he wanted to say. She too yearned to see him but was prepared to wait it out and hope that they all made it through unscathed. They would often talk, but tonight Harry sounded more desperate. “I don’t think that I can wait any longer”, he pleadingly told her. “I have to come over and see you”.

“You can’t”, she said. “A few of the ants here have now come down with the sickness. They’ve been put into a special section of the nest as quarantine, but nobody really knows how many others may have it. Even I may have it”, she said. She wasn’t particularly worried about this thought as she knew that she was young and strong. The survival rate was high for the younger ants and many didn’t exhibit any symptoms at all. “Imagine if I gave it to you and you took it back inside your nest. Your parents may get it. Or worse still, your queen. She’s getting on these days. Something like this could take her out completely and where would you all be then?”.

But Harry was persistent. “I don’t care if I get it. I just have to see you. I’d risk everything just to spend a few minutes with you. Perhaps if we meet somewhere in the forest, away from both nests and keep a couple of metres apart so that we don’t have direct physical contact with each other. Then we’d be safe for sure. But I could at least get to see you”.

In the end, against her better judgement, Sally’s resolve weakened and she agreed to meet Harry by the old tree hollow in the fern glen that evening at dusk. If they were caught, they would both be in big trouble. Seeing members of other colonies had been forbidden in both nests for the indefinite future. A little shiver of excitement went through her body at the thought of seeing him and the risk of doing something against the wishes of her community. But would she be able to keep her nerve and get past the all-seeing eyes of the guards?

Harry was confident that they would be fine. He’d thought through his plan over and over. It seemed flawless. He knew that when the guards did their rounds there would be a moment where he would be able to slip silently past them and out into the upper world. He could then easily make his way over to their meeting spot. Despite his willingness to break the rules, Harry was still a very community minded ant. He definitely didn’t want to bring the silent killer back to his nest and so he was determined to keep his distance from Sally. He knew that when he saw her, he’d want to wrap himself around her and entwine in a lover’s embrace, but there was just too much at stake for him to succumb to those desires.

The last couple of hours before dusk seemed to drag on forever for Harry. But finally, the time had come and he slowly took to the tunnel that would lead him to the entrance of the nest. He could see the guards were just hanging out and chatting with each other, not appearing particularly vigilant. Now he just needed to wait until they moved away to do their rounds and the coast would be clear. It was time. The guards had stopped talking to each other now and had moved away from the entranceway. He only had a few minutes to act so he’d better move quickly. And with that he snuck silently out of the hole at the top of the nest and quickly raced out of sight. As he made his way through the grass towards the fern glen, so many thoughts went through his mind. The longing to see his girl. The advice of Anne to resist the urge to go. The harshness of Gus telling him that he was a selfish prick. The romanticism of Adam that had encouraged him. And what would his parents think if they ever found out he’d broken the rules? His mind then wandered to the larger issues. The perils that had fallen over the ant world in recent times. The sad news of the colonies that had succumbed to the sickness. The death toll rising every day with some nests being completely wiped out. Would they ever be able to resume life as it was before? Would anybody ever find a cure or a vaccine? What changes that had been invoked in the crisis would persist once it was over? When would things be normal again and what would normal look like? Had the decisions of the queen been the right ones to save their community or would they fall like so many others? He had faith somehow that everything would be ok. He’d be careful tonight and yes, he would keep his physical distance from Sally this evening. Just seeing her would be enough. It made him feel happy. And as he crossed over the wombat trail only a few metres from the hollowed-out tree trunk, he was eaten by an echidna.

* Illustration by Kimi Swedosh