lonely road The colony that lives at my local

ant megalopolis

is made up of ants which are large, black in the back, and red in the front. Today, there was a siege on the megalopolis. Smallish black ants scurried around, picking fights. I crouched down to get a closer look. One of the redheaded ants seemed to be getting into it with one of the little ants. Their heads collided. Their bodies moved as one unit, erratically weaving in between holes in the anthill. The main hole in the anthill is rather large. It has a sort of cliff’s edge at the top of it. The ants climb down the side of the cliff to get into the hole. It seems like the hole bifurcates into two sub-holes that go down to god knows where. After a few seconds, or a minute or something, my legs told me to please stand up, complaining vaguely of blood flow and compressed nerves. My eyes had started to protest, too, not to mention my spine, which was uninterested in bending in the way that I was demanding. Observing ants is not only a problem of legs, but of eyes and spines. I stood up, allowing my legs to stretch, my eyes to wander to the trees and the hills, and my spine to slip into something more comfortable. Unable to stop thinking about the siege of the megalopolis, I squatted back down. The little black ant was climbing up a blade of grass, narrowly avoiding the advances of the red ant. I had never seen this kind of vertical warfare before. Suddenly, the black ant descended from the blade of grass, grabbed one of the redhead’s six legs, and started dragging it far away from the megalopolis, its home. I looked to the other redheaded ants, expecting someone to step in and save their comrade, but they seemed to be unconcerned with the whole episode. While being dragged through the outskirts of the megalopolis, the redhead twisted around, escaping the little black ant's grasp, and darted back toward home. After it crossed the event horizon of the megalopolis, it scurried around wildly. It seemed to be freaking out, or celebrating, or both. I looked back over to the little black ant. It was perched at the top of a blade of grass, as if lying in wait. winter later