Mr. Peanut in the Sierras

In third grade I wrote a report about ants for my teacher, Ms. Heuttman. (In a future blog I will describe Ms. Huettman's hairdo). In my research I learned that the ant's body is divided into three different sections: the head, the thorax and the abdomen. On the report's cover I drew a picture of an ant over the words, "The Amazing Ant." The picture was really cool and showed a jaunty ant sporting a top hat and a cane. It seemed to be dancing:

"The Amazing Ant"

Anyway, since third grade I have acquired more ant knowledge. Some of my knowledge stemmed from the 1954 sci-fi flick, Them:

In Them, a colony of ants is exposed to nuclear radiation out in the desert. They mutate and grow huge, really huge. Even their pupae are huge and look like those big white propane tanks you see behind gas stations while driving up to Tahoe. The ants are the size of dump trucks and march around the desert sand waving their big pipe-cleaner antennas while making horrific screeching sounds:

This movie really scared me. I was only about five years old when my parents allowed me to watch it. The protagonist was a child named Jerry. In the movie's climactic scene, Jerry is shown running through a town's subterranean sewer system while being chased by some of the ants. I didn't sleep that night. I hid under my covers, worried I might be skewered by the pincers of a giant ant and carried off to the colony.

Years later, in July, 1980, we took a family backpacking trip to Granite Basin in Kings Canyon with our family friend, Betsy. Betsy was from South Carolina. One night Betsy woke up and startled us all out of our sleeping bags, hollering, "There's an ant in my ear! There's an ant in my ear!" With her southern accent she sounded like the maid from Gone with the Wind: "Ms. Scarlett! Ms. Scarlett! Ms. Scarlett!"

We tried to convince Betsy that there was not in an ant in her ear. It was just a hair, or wax, or the wind blowing through the trees. She persisted, but on the last day of our trip she reassured us that she was better. The ant had died, she said. When we returned home my dad took her to his office. He looked in her ear with his otoscope, and, much to everyone's surprise (except for Betsy's), he used some tweezers to extract the head, the thorax and the abdomen of a dead Sierran ant.

I wonder about Sierran ants. They are five times the size of regular, little black house ants. I have simply dubbed them "high altitude ants." Is it possible that ants grow bigger at higher altitudes? If so, could the Mt. Everest Base Camp have ants like there were in Them? This is precisely why I will never, ever visit the Mt. Everest Base Camp!

John Muir wondered about Sierran ants as well:

On my way to camp a few minutes ago, I passed a dead pine nearly ten feet in diameter. It has been enveloped in fire from top to bottom so that now it looks like a grand black pillar set up as a monument. In this noble shaft a colony of large jet-black ants have established themselves, laboriously cutting tunnels and cells through the wood, whether sound or decayed. The entire trunk seems to have been honeycombed, judging by the size of the talus of gnawed chips like sawdust piled up around its base. They are more intelligent-looking than their small, belligerent, strong-scented brethren, and have better manners, though quick to fight when required. Their towns are carved in fallen trunks as well as in those left standing, but never in sound, living trees or in the ground.

When you happen to sit down to rest or take notes near a colony, some wandering hunter is sure to find you and come cautiously forward to discover the nature of the intruder and what ought to be done. If you are not too near the town and keep perfectly still he may run across your feet a few times, over your legs and hands and face, up your trousers, as if taking your measure and getting comprehensive views, then go in peace without raising an alarm. If however a tempting spot is offered or some suspicious movement excites him, a bite follows, and such a bite! I fancy that a bear- or wolf-bite is not to be compared with it. A quick electric flame of pain flashes along the outraged nerves, and you discover for the first time how great is the capacity for sensation you are possessed of. A shriek, a grab for the animal, and a bewildered stare follow this bite of bites as one comes back to consciousness from sudden eclipse. Fortunately, if careful, one need not be bitten oftener than once or twice in a lifetime.

This wonderful electric ant is about three fourths of an inch long. Bears are fond of them, and tear and gnaw their home logs to pieces, and roughly devour the eggs, larvae, parent ants, and the rotten or sound wood of the cells, all in one spicy acid hash. The Digger Indians also are fond of the larvae and even of the perfect ants, so I have been told by old mountaineers. They bite off and reject the head, and eat the sickly acid body with keen relish. Thus are the poor biters bitten, like every other biter, big or little, in the world's great family.