of their own, released from some among them in an odorous shout against impending catastrophe. They began to run about in loops and circles, searching for enemies. Nothing was there. Then, in less than a minute, a faint chemical cloud passed silently over them, a fog rolling off a poison sea. Those ants who remained aboveground lifted their heads and waved their antennae in curiosity. Within seconds they collapsed, paralyzed. In minutes they were all dead. As the fog settled closer to the ground, the gods arrived with their accoutrements floating by their sides, and poured streams of deadly liquid down into the nest entrances.
The next morning the great ant conurbation was an environmental dead zone, a killing field, the site of a myrmicide, a cemetery, all of it lifeless and still. Not an ant, not any other kind of small creature, moved within it. No birds or lizards or squirrels, which still abounded beyond the perimeter, visited the ruined land. Clusters of vegetation not trampled by the divine visitors still stood intact, but not a trace of insect life stirred upon or around them. The only sounds were the whispers of wind over the lake through the canopy of the surrounding pines, and the soft lapping of waves at the water's edge.
26
HUDDLED IN A NATURAL HOLE between two roots of a gallberry bush, the tiny Woodland Colony had survived the destruction of its overbearing neighbor. The kill zone in which the Supercolony died, now still and silent, had stopped just short of the Woodlander retreat along the shore of Dead Owl Cove. When first the Trailhead and then the Streamside Colonies ruled this region, their scouts sometimes ventured far enough into the forest to pass close by the Woodlander nest entrance. They never found the little colony. But a few came near, and often enough to frighten the inhabitants. The Woodlanders stayed close to home, forced to survive on a few small scraps of food, mostly dead insects. After Supercolony took over, their situation worsened. Forays by Supercolony scouts were more frequent than those of the earlier colonies, and some approached dangerously near. Woodlander foragers were forced to stay still closer to the entrance of their little nest. Even then, a few were picked off by the Supercolony scouts.
At the time of the destruction of Supercolony, the Woodland Colony was also dying, although in a different way. The number of workers had dropped from close to a hundred in the Trailhead Colony era to the twenty that huddled inside now. There were no soldiers at all. The Queen was starving. Her ovaries had shriveled and she no longer laid eggs. The death rate of workers was inexorably rising, while the birth rate fell to zero. The little colony, it seemed, could not last the remainder of the warm season as a close neighbor of Supercolony.
Then came the moving tree trunks, the ant gods, who miraculously wiped Supercolony off the face of antdom. Their lethal pressure was lifted instantly from the imperiled Woodlanders. A scattering of Supercolony scouts had still been exploring outside the kill zone when the gods came, but they offered no further threat. All died within hours, as soon as they tried to return home and unknowingly touched the still-toxic soil. Now, within a week, not a trace of their scent remained around the Woodlander nest.
Woodlander workers, timid at first, began to venture farther than ever before from their nest. They found more and better food, mostly in the form of dead or easily captured insects of the kind preempted earlier by their dominant neighbors. Also newly available in generous quantity were droplets of sugary excrement that had fallen from aphids living on nearby understory plants.
By late September, with the weather still warm and the vegetation green, the ovaries of the Woodland Queen revived. She was laying eggs, and healthy young larvae filled the brood chamber of the hidden nest.
By the following April, with the last of the winter's chill lifted from the deeper recesses of the soil and the spring renewal of plant growth well under way, the Woodlander foragers began traveling farther afield. The colony resumed its growth with greater vigor. In only a matter of days, the first Woodlander scouts entered the wasteland that was once the Supercolony territory. The pesticide had entirely dissipated from the kill zone, and insects and other small invertebrates were infiltrating the area to explore it on their own. Many were easy prey for the Woodlanders.