by Zubin Mathai
Our little hero, the worker ant with the lone antenna, began running in the direction the wind had taken the pink petal. She was looking up, not focused on where she was going, and not using her antenna and legs to feel for vibrations like any careful ant should do. She also began daydreaming again, this time flying on the wind exactly like the petal. The wind was her friend, tickling each of her legs playfully, before helping her get closer to the petal flying far ahead.
With a crunch and a gasp, the ant (on the ground and back to reality) smashed into something large and rock hard. It took a while for her eyes to refocus, and when they did, she smiled and wiggled her antenna in happy arcs at seeing her best friend. The soldier ant in front of her was a giant compared to her, its shiny, black skin thick like armor, and its two antennae twitching and twirling, always ready to read the surroundings.
The soldier angled its head down, and our hero could see the shadowed space where her friend’s left eye should be. The worker wanted to play, so she hopped to her right, and every time the soldier moved her head she hopped some more, always staying hidden in her friend’s blind spot. The soldier’s antennae twirled furiously and her body tensed, for she sensed something must be right there. Finally, the game was up when the little worker burst into a laugh. Her laughter was loud and high pitched, and even though the soldier immediately spun and put up a leg to stop it, a wind far away heard the laugh and laughed too.
“I knew I’d find you here, little one.”
The worker looked down sheepishly, knowing she might be in trouble. She looked up with an innocent smile, and the giant soldier let go of her frown and cocked her head. The soldier then lined her up in front of its blackly shining eye and tapped her kindly on the head with its antennae.
“Come, my little friend. You should not stray so far from the colony. What would you do if some animal came to eat you — and I wasn't here to protect you?”
The two ants made their way towards more familiar ground, over glistening grains of sand and smooth stones sending the day’s heat up through tiny legs. They crawled through the fallen leaves of a dying bush, and as it called out to them for water they did not slow at all, for these two species did not speak the same language. The soldier was in front, leading the way and focused intently, swiveling its head to keep its eye scanning and ready. The little worker trailed, distracted by everything around, the way the light shimmered along the ground or how hidden crickets were loudly showing off the roughness of their legs.
The rhythm of the march soon made the worker sleepy, and she fell into another daydream. She was on the wind again, bobbing and twirling, this time almost caught up to the flying pink petal. In her mind, she thought she heard the whisper again, coming from a place in her body she had never felt before, and that whisper once again beckoned: Come find me.
“Oh my, you’ve done it again!”
The tiny worker was snapped out of her reverie by her friend’s exclamation, and she looked up to see where the soldier was staring. Her large friend rarely laughed — she was always so serious about her role — but the little worker giggled when she turned and looked behind her. The barely visible trail she had left in the dust and dirt was not a straight line like her friend’s, but was stuffed with zigs, zags, and even circles.
“Having just that one antenna sure keeps you from walking a straight line, doesn’t it?” said the soldier, stepping forward. She patted her tiny friend’s head, and even brushed some dust from her body, before giving her a push with a giant leg to send her in the right direction.
The ants crested a hill made up of gravel and dried grass, and could finally look down to see the bustle and ordered chaos of their kin. Beneath them were hundreds of workers, all walking in such perfect, straight lines, going back and forth with purpose and focus. The little worker rolled her eyes as she surveyed the scene, always reacting that way whenever she saw her sisters like this. How come they never walked in curves, never looked up to smile at the sun, or never even stopped for a rest or to share some jokes, she wondered.
With another encouraging shove from her friend, the worker had no choice but to go join the lines. A few nearby sisters greeted her happily, eager to dance and communicate where the food they were carrying had come from. A few, however, when they recognized who it was — that tiny one with the lone antenna, always dreaming instead of working — ignored her or teased her amongst themselves.
Pretending she did not hear, the worker walked the line and blurred her eyes, retreating to the comforts of imagination.
The soldier moved off to the side to join another soldier, and together they kept watch, scanning back and forth and all around, ensuring the safety of the colony as the workers worked. They played their roles of guarding, and the workers played their roles of the grunt work, and together these two sets of ants unioned to keep the colony alive and churning.
The worker got to end of the ant trail, where the food source was, and was happy to see that it was succulent greens (she so hated when it was a dead insect or animal). She tried on her own to lift a piece of a leaf, grunting and groaning, hoping some of her sisters would come to her aid. Finally they did, and luckily it was enough of a number that the little ant didn’t have too much of a burden. On the way back she got lost in another reverie, picturing the shade of this leaf as a kiss blown down by a smiling cloud blocking the heat of the sun.
“Why don’t you pay attention! Why don’t you keep the line!” shouted one of the other ants, and soon the rest joined in when they noticed that it was the small worker — the one who always went in circles — that was the reason they kept pulling to the left.
In frustration, the rest of the workers tossed the leaf to the ground and then surrounded the little one and began yelling at her. They shouted insults at her lack of work ethic, at the tininess of her body, and worst of all, how she wasn’t really an ant if she only had half of a functioning set of antennae.
The worker didn’t like this wall of noise, the words which stung, and being made to feel so alone and separate. In her mind’s eye she felt water roll down from her eye and wasn’t sure what that imagining meant. She just knew that she wanted to be even tinier, tiny enough to disappear so that no one could see her well enough to yell at her.
When her friend, the soldier, saw the commotion, she came over to defend the worker. She broke up the circle of ants with just her size and a stern look, and told everyone to stop picking on the small one and get back to work. Most of the workers obeyed her, but some stood up, accusing her of always sticking up for her defective friend.
When one worker even defiantly said she must only stick up for her because they were both crippled, one missing an eye and the other an antenna, the soldier scoffed and stepped up to glare down at the insolence. But, it was when another worker spoke up, saying she would tell the queen about how the soldier was playing favorites, that the soldier stumbled back, as if those uttered words burned like the sun.
For hours in the shadeless heat, the workers worked and the soldiers guarded. The little one tried her hardest to push away whenever a daydream came to knock. She so wanted to not be picked on again, but she mainly didn’t want her friend to get in trouble with the queen, so she put her head down, focused on the straight line of ant-prints in front of her, and played her role.
She marched in that single column with the rest, greeting any ant coming the other way and robotically dancing to tell them where the food was. She went to the end of the ant trail and waited for the right number to join her to pick up a leaf, and didn’t even complain later on when they had to pick up a dead grasshopper. She kept quiet and worked, as the heat of the day left her alone with her kin, and as the thoughts settled in that tomorrow, and the day after, would probably all be the same.
three
Family
