18 | October | 2019 | Nature's Place

Royal Ant

She struggled in the water a while, head sinking below the surface just as I got to it.

Fresh from the wet, still vigorous but drenched. Wings clinging with the weight of water.

One wing entangled, torn where her leg fits through it. Flying times are over little one.

At rest a while on the warm bamboo stick, time to recover her energy for the next effort.

A natural creature just keeps going as long as it has the energy, to perform its function, instinctively.

She’s beginning to feel the need for preening, to get the kinks or debris out of her form. Takes her time.

The head is first for cleaning, eyes and antennae, where the senses are primarily located.

And she’s off, exploring various locations for suitability of habitat to her potential offspring.

Or she’s just checking out her world, small as it is it is mighty big to her eyes. Would be to mine …

Relentless, until she finds what she’s looking for, what is right to her sense of things.

And time for pause … everybody needs pause in this fast, hard, hostile world.

A queen perhaps, of the green-head tribe, of which there are many colonies around the house.

Brought to ground, or water in this case, by the strong winds and rain that’s been passing lately.

Being winged she is on her way to birth another ant colony, chances are, workers of the hard soil.

It’s easy to tell where a colony is days after a little rain, where the grass is growing straight and strong and green.

They prep the ground with their nest site diggings, the way a gardener would to plant food and flowers.

Just one of the millions of creatures working the earth, that we would be poorer for their passing.