FIRE ANTS
by April Halprin Wayland
All for one and one for all!—our tribal cry
Flood waters rise!
Quick, form a ball—
our larvae, pupae, eggs and Mother Queen inside!
We roll this writhing globe,
take turns on top,
so all breathe air, so all survive.
Trapping air in body hair,
even underwater,
we’re alive.
We float this boat of bodies bobbing…BAM!
We’ve hit a tree! We swarm the trunk
and wait for rising rivers to recede.
All for one and one for all!—our tribal cry
At last—the end of rain!
We build a mound—
it rises two feet high on a soggy field of grain.
And if a passer-by
comes near our new terrain?
It will feel pain.
Grasshopper, rat
song bird or cat—
All for one and one for all!—our tribal cry
this trespasser will fry.
published in Nasty Bugs–poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2012)
For an exceptionally cool picture of a floating fire ant ball, see: http://claycoleman.tripod.com/id180.htm
“The entire colony of ants abandon their mound when floods arrive. They then bind together into a ball that floats on the flood waters…The ants within this living, seething mass reposition themselves so that no ant is left underwater for too long…”
Fire ants are able to survive by creating a rotating ball, forming a protective sphere around the colony queen.
