IN JUNE, ON picnics, on hikes, our children saw columns of ants in the sky. Ants fly? they asked. We thought of when we were younger, when we were more romantic, when we learned about the behavior of ants. We knew a lot about the mating rituals of ants because we had written a thesis on them, because our mothers had, because we remembered things Mister Smith told us in Bio 101.
WE TOLD OUR children this was their nuptial flight. We told them it was how ants make children. We did not say starlings hover nearby, watching, waiting until the ants are too tired to fight, or too dizzy from the day, and all the starlings have to do is open their mouths to receive this humming column of food in the sky.
FROM AFAR IT looked like falling rain and we did not tell our children how the male ants beat their wings excitedly, mount, and drop in hundreds from the sky. How the queen flies away, tears off her own wings, digs a hole, forms a nest, and waits for her children to hatch.
WE LET THEM make an anthill from a Mason jar and keep it in their room. They fed the ants breadcrumbs and within a few days the ants died. While our children were away at school we dug up new ants and replaced the old ones, so for at least a little while our children would not know there are things they cannot save.