Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/174

 carrying their prizes; perhaps a small dead fly, or a tiny grub still squirming inconvenient protest against his fate, or the head or leg or wing of some victim so bulky as only to be dealt with piecemeal; while here and there some triumphant forager would come struggling homeward inch by slow inch, dragging a prize many times bigger and heavier than herself—perhaps a fat spider or a sprawling little dead grasshopper—which she had feared to dissect for transport lest the pieces should be stolen in her absence. Working her way backwards and tugging the prize along by the head or leg or wing, held up for minutes at a time by the obstacle of a root or a pebble, she would drag and pull and worry like a terrier on a rope, till at last the precious burden was brought to the foot of the mound, where it could safely be cut up at leisure.

Among these eager foragers was one whom, as typical of her species, we may distinguish by the name Formica. A strenuous and experienced worker in the prime of her powers, on leaving the nest she had speedily struck off aside from the trails of her fellows, desirous of fresh hunting grounds in the miniature jungle of grass and weeds. Having come across a head of red-clover bloom trodden down and crushed by the pasturing cattle, she was now filling herself greedily