Ant cities, bridges and water
Ants fascinated me. I would spend hours watching them as they followed their trails, collected their food and scavenged.
In the woodlands I would search out the great mounds of big red wood ants and kick their mounds to watch how they rushed to defend it. They were ferocious and fearless.
One of my favourite games was to create islands in bowls of water by placing bricks upright in the bowl. I’d balance another brick horizontally on the upright; put some soil on top and a slate. By setting up another similar adjacent to it and connecting the two with twigs I could had two interconnected islands that offered a range of possibility.
I would scrat up a nest of ants and place them on one of the islands to watch their antics. They would rush all over investigating and looking for an escape. They would scurry down to the water’s edge and look for a means of getting off the island. They would use any floating debris as boats to try to escape. They would run across the twig and investigate the other island.
If left they would set up home under the slate and settle.
I would love watching their industry and the way they communicated. I would place sugar, treacle or honey on the far island and watch to see it discovered by scouts and soon a supply route would be set up with ants transporting the foods back to the nest.
One of my games was to place the ants on one island and the larvae and eggs on the other and watch the frenzy that took place as the larvae were gathered up and carried to safety.
Another game I enjoyed was warfare. I would set up a colony of the more aggressive red ants on one island and the small black ants on the other. Then I would add a bridge and watch what happened when the two met.
There seemed to me to be intelligence at work. Those ants acted as a single mind. The single ants showed altruism and cooperation as they sought to create a nest, find food, explore and collectively fight off attackers.
There was a whole alien civilisation in my back garden. It was fascinating.
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