I liked this chapter very much - yes, the battle of the ants was fascinating . . .
I have a book called 'How Ants Work' and enjoy looking at it from time to time.
Watching ants . . . I like it when they make a puddle on the walk, and they all move 'as one' . . . what you have is a puddle - a dark shadow kind of thing that's moving along as if it were one animal.
Our cat, Skitter, goes bananas when she sees it.
This isn't the best of photos, but here she is with an ant colony on the walk when she was about a year old . . .
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Something that came to mind for me when Thoreau wrote of the animals he watched . . .
Many animals and birds can become 'used to' a human being there. We used to have a favourite pair of swans down at Grenadier Pond . . . they returned to the north end of that pond every breeding season . . .
The second year, we watched the Pen sitting on her eggs - the Cob would change places with her, when she wanted to eat.
During this 'changing', we got a glimpse of the eggs hatching!
A couple of days later, I begged off classes for the afternoon to go and study the pair with their cygnets . . . I was in a computer course at the time and our teacher was sympathetic with my need to be with 'my swans' . . .
I was on the shore, and the big Cob was sitting with the cygnets - there were about 8 of them (I still have a picture somewhere).
Swans, like most birds and animals, are agressively protective while breeding and when the cygnets are little, they don't miss a trick.
I was sitting cross-legged, not so much as a yard from the cygnets . . . there were people around me - when they came to see the babies closer, the father bird would hiss them away, yet he allowed me there.
The Pen was out in the middle of the pond, ducking her head for vegetation - a third swan came into the picture and began circling the Pen . . . the Cob promptly got up and swan/flew to the middle to defend his mate and left me sitting there with his tiny cygnets!
I had obviously gained the bird's trust!
Here is the best picture I got of them, while sitting there with the clutch of cygs . . .
The people standing around were just amazed at this. I did not move the whole time the big bird was on the pond chasing off the intruder.
It was a wonderful experience.
But I do realize something . . . I was wrong to encourage this 'trust' . . . especially with young swans . . . if the young of a species get the idea that 'humans are ok', they could end up in big trouble when they meet up with the wrong kind of people.
It's really a good idea to scare off wild animals when they start getting too comfortable with you.
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