The Little Ant with the Criminal Mind (10/26)

(10/26@10/24) The little ant wondered what could be done to create some kind of community within the community of red ant captives in the black ant colony where they were living out the rest of their lives.  He thought that they should have more influence over the black ant community for one thing.  But to do that the red ants had to have a community of their own.  What created community among ants?  What caused influence?  Among ants, it was the trails of pheromones.  He could see with out them, which meant in a lot of ways he was less upset by their exile among the black ants that were some of his fellows by the lack of familiar odors, actions, and other signals.  It maybe also allowed him to think about what  was really going on rather than merely reacting to it.  Producing any kind of reaction was an element of influence and a step towards control.  Creating a reaction such that the source of the action could not be traced back to oneself was often desireable.  Could he find a way to manufacture the pheromones that his fellow red ants were used to?

(10/26 cont) The ants with amputated abdomens still had mandibles.  They could still bite their fellow ants if they chose to.  So the other ants watched them.  The decapitated ants, however much they might run about, could never bite or really harm anyone, so they were allowed to run about, carry out their death throes as they would, crawling over and bumping into others until at long last they finally slowed down and stopped moving and were eventually hauled off to the midden.  They were like restless ghosts that one saw out of the corner of one’s eye, horrid to look at directly but otherwise not too distracting until at last, like the spirit of a long-departed ancester stepping into the frame of their final portrait they froze and the image was fixed for good and all.  In a way they were like ghosts, startling reminders of the no longer living but unable to any more effect anything or anyone in the material world.  But the little ant felt their touch.  The abdomenless ones either accepted the finallity of their situation….