CLIO GRAY
EXTRAS
EXTRAS
My Insect Soul
Ants are extraordinary.
There are nine and a half thousand species so far known, as many species as there are types of birds in the world, spread between maybe 10 trillion colonies. There are so many species, and so diverse, that myrmecology is a separate subdiscipline in etomological study. It is estimated they could comprise an astonishing 10% of the earth’s animals. As it says in Beeton’s Dictionary of Natural History they have industrious habits, a love of order, subordination and unremitting economy.
I could do with some of that!
Though not in the form of driver ants, who are so industrious they will just march over anything that gets in their way and have killed animals, including people, and especially young babies left untended in cots, all dying by suffocation, the ants pouring into their mouths and down into their lungs, which is enough to give you nightmares.
Remember Dr Quatermass and his ant like martians?
As the poet N.M. Rashed has it:
My insect soul
My wretched ant-like soul
Kept crawling at the foot of walls
Making snakey patterns through the night...