The large ant grasped the fluffy, golden, decapitated bee head between her powerful jaws. The ground beneath the bee tree, strewn with the remains of the bloody battle, provided easy pickings for the Bull-ants that lived on the edge of Beth’s garden. They possessed a keen sense of smell located in their antennae and the stench of death attracted them in great numbers. They also possessed excellent vision. As they entered the battlefield they could clearly see with their large, compound eyes, the thousands of velvety golden orbs, slightly sticky on one side with smeared bee blood. The Bull-ants, in common with the wasps, had plenty of young of their own to feed and this windfall was most welcome.
As the ant returned to her nest, she repositioned her load a little, in order to maintain her balance. Not that the bee head was much of a burden to her. She was a giant, by ant standards, measuring over thirty millimetres and equipped with long, toothed mandibles for biting, and a very well developed sting. Her tough, chitinous body was glossy black and boasted, in certain light, an iridescent dark green sheen. The Bull-ant was an ancient ant, not much changed in form and feature from her ancestors trapped in resin over fifty million years ago. Her colony was large, with over one thousand individuals. Due to her size and shape she somewhat resembled a wingless wasp, but in contrast to that distant relative, the social structure of her colony was quite primitive.
The ant mound itself was broad and obvious, measuring nearly a metre across. The surface was decorated with pebbles, pine needles and other pieces of plant material. Underground it consisted of a number of irregular galleries, connected by passages and extending a metre below the earth. There were several entrance holes, allowing for flexible escape plans and ensuring rapid defence of any area of the nest. Not for these proud insects the fate of the imprisoned Honeybee queen; trapped behind the blocked single entry hole, waiting in darkness to die.
As she entered her nest mound, she passed her own queen, who was venturing out on a trip to the forest to collect bee heads. In contrast to the bee and wasp queens, it was actually quite difficult to distinguish this queen from her workers, as she was approximately the same size. She was no pampered, housebound princess, but was instead a long lived warrior queen, who ranged side by side with her daughters, defending with them and hunting with them. More than ten summers ago she bore wings, participated in her single nuptial flight, and then established her colony. All but a small fraction of the millions of sperm she received a decade ago, remained alive inside of her. Her body provided them with nutrients and an environment in which they continued to thrive. The sperm was always available to the queen whenever she required it to fertilise an egg. With luck, she could expect to lead the colony for many years to come.
She had few maternal instincts and believed in the notion of ‘tough love’. Her eggs were not tenderly placed in intricately designed cells like those of the wasps and bees. On the contrary, she dropped her eggs randomly about her underground chambers. Neither the queen nor her workers gave the young much attention. Feeding too was a rough and ready affair, for the adults generally dropped unmasticated lumps of dead insect near the larvae, and then left them to fend for themselves. These babies needed to learn to eat raw meat right from the start. This caused them to be so aggressive, that they cannibalised their weaker siblings if given half a chance. The grubs were covered with rough, spiky hairs on their bodies, to protect them from their fierce sisters. They pupated in cocoons as tough as leather and then emerged, without assistance, as fully functional and highly independent adults. In one respect however, they displayed a fierce allegiance to each other. Nest protection. In defence these insects were magnificently courageous, defiant and supremely confident. They possessed a powerful sting, and were well known by animal and human alike for their ability to use it. As such, they were treated with respect by all, and had few natural enemies. Even the ant eating Echidna viewed them as a meal of last resort, preferring the softer-bodied ants and termites.
But unlike the introduced European wasp and Honeybee, this formidable native ant was a very valuable member of her bushland community. Oddly enough, these fierce Bull-ants performed a similar function to the harmless earthworms by excavating their nests and thus aerating the soil and improving plant growth. They also kept the forest floor clean by scavenging anything dead or unhealthy. The Bull-ant adults were not vegetarians, like adult wasps and bees. They considered meat their proper food. They occasionally lapped-up sweet plant juices for variety, but they were primarily carnivores.
The Bull-ant entered the nest and dropped the severed bee’s head in the vicinity of several larvae. The hungry, hairy, eyeless, legless grubs sensed the presence of food and attempted to wriggle towards it. Indifferent to their struggles, the ant returned to the surface and headed back into the forest to collect more meat. She followed no scent trail, as other ants commonly did. Having lived in the garden for all the three years of her life she knew her way around perfectly well by sight.
As she approached the bee tree she noticed the human child. Resenting this intrusion, she decided to repel him. The boy bent down, curious about the golden fluff that covered the ground and floated in little eddies in the light breeze. He reached down his hand to touch the stuff. The Bull-ant seized her opportunity. Using her powerful hind legs almost like a grasshopper, she propelled herself with surprising speed in leaps and bounds towards the child. It was a bold attack by such a tiny creature. She was an ant with attitude. Unseen, she landed on the back of the boy’s hand.
Rick felt the bite first. The ant gripped his skin tightly with her long, straight, serrated mandibles. The boy shook his hand vigorously, trying to dislodge his attacker. But the Bull-ant’s reputation for ferocity and determination was well deserved. She held on doggedly to her victim with jagged jaws and curled her abdomen underneath and upwards, thrusting her long, barbless sting into the soft skin of the child’s hand. Then she injected her poison, a potent combination of formic acid and a proteinaceous venom, similar to that of wasps and bees.
Rick felt a river of pure fire engulf his hand. With a scream he ran off, dislodging the ant with a final flick of his arm. She landed safely on the ground, little the worse for wear. The noise and pheromone production caused by the initial attack, motivated dozens of other Bull-ants, similarly engaged in foraging, to also mount an assault. They took the offensive, jaws raised, pursuing the boy some ten metres along the path, a savage sisterhood programmed to attack. Trying to ignore his pain, Rick ran straight towards the house, crying loudly. His mother, who was collecting salad greens for lunch from the vegetable garden, heard his cries and came running down the path to see what was wrong.
For a horrified moment or two, Beth thought that her son had also suffered a wasp attack. His agonised crying reminded her all too clearly of the incident with Chance a few weeks before. It was with enormous relief that she discovered instead that he’d been stung by a single Bull-ant. Excruciatingly painful as this was, there was no comparison with a mass envenomation by the local European wasps. Comforting her injured child, she guided him up the path to the house, and applied an ice-pack to the swelling.
“Where were you when you were stung?”
“Along the forest path a bit,” Rick sobbed.
“I saw this yellow, fluffy stuff on the ground and I bent down to touch it. Then the ant bit my hand.”
“What was it? Wattle blossom or something?”
“I don’t think so. It’s right in the forest where there’s not enough sun for Wattle trees.”
Beth gave Rick an analgesic to ease the pain, and sent him to lie down with the ice-pack on his hand. Twenty minutes later the burning sensation began to ease. Once Beth saw that her son was improving she took her own walk back down along the forest path. Just as Rick had said, several metres into the forest shade she found an old Gum tree with a fuzzy, golden carpet at the base of its trunk. At first she thought she was right, and that it was fallen Wattle blossom. She leant down for a closer inspection, forewarned about the danger of the lurking Bull-ants, and noticed several of them carrying the fluff in their jaws. Definitely not any type of blossom, she thought. These ants, like the wasps, required protein for their young.
Beth studied the stuff a while longer, carefully scooping some up with a leaf for a closer look. With a jolt she recognised the tiny, severed head capsules of dozens of Honeybees, lying in the curl of the gum leaf. She gazed around her in horror, as the sheer scale of the massacre became apparent. Looking upwards she noticed a tree hollow high above her with a steady stream of European wasps coming and going. She re-examined the contents of the Gum leaf, and distinguished the odd wasp head amongst those of the bees. Clearly the invaders had suffered their own casualties.
Carefully dropping the leaf, Beth stepped back, still wary of the Bull ants scavenging about in the detritus. She despaired for the creatures of her garden. This was not competition; this was annihilation. Firmly, Beth resolved to complete the mission she’d procrastinated about in the weeks since the attack on Chance. The wasp’s nest must be destroyed and she would do it tonight. Her sympathy and admiration for Zenandra remained undiminished. How could one not admire the sheer magnitude of the queen’s achievements? In the space of a few short months, from a meagre and solitary beginning, she’d conquered Beth’s garden, and now extended her dominion into the surrounding bush. No predators existed in this new homeland to challenge her imperial design. But fear now tempered Beth’s admiration. If a new generation of queens colonised the local bushland, Beth believed the wasp scourge would become unstoppable.
Beth knew what to do. She’d already decided against a professional pest exterminator. If she was to betray the queen, then she needed the courage to do it herself. Walking slowly back to the house, she slipped through the fence and made the familiar detour to the woodpile. There, beneath the dry grass and piles of old logs, lay the nest. To the careful observer, the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the worker wasps disclosed the location of the single entrance. Beth felt unbearable pity for the insects, going about their daily activities, with no inkling of the looming disaster. Always until now she had spared them. This time she would not. It was inevitable. Beth felt as helpless and impotent as the wasps were to change what was to come.
She returned to the house in the scorching mid afternoon heat, to check on Rick and to prepare her chemical weapons. Everything was planned and ready to go as it had been for weeks. Beth’s regard for Zenandra had prevented her, time and time again, from following through on the attack. There would be no reprieve tonight however. The survival of her garden and even the safety of her children depended on it, and she determined not to let her personal feelings distort her judgement. After all, she felt certain that the wasp queen would suffer from no such sentimental compunctions should their situations be reversed.
Rick’s hand was still painfully swollen, but he was otherwise in good spirits. Beth didn’t tell him that the fuzz in the forest consisted of severed bee heads. It somehow seemed too gruesome. She prepared a drink and a snack and brought it to him before she went out to the garden shed to check on her preparations for the night. From an old cardboard box she removed a bee keeper’s hat and veil, a pair of double-lined gauntlet gloves, a long-sleeved denim shirt, a dust mask and some overalls. At the bottom of the box lay two tins of Carbaryl insecticidal dust, two cans of fast knock-down residual insect spray, and some sheets of red cellophane. The only other thing she needed was a torch.
Beth carried the box and its contents into the kitchen. She then went to see Rick, to borrow the headlamp his father had given him for Christmas.
“O.K. Mum. It’s in my wardrobe. But it’s got a loose connection or something. It keeps going on and off.”
Beth went to find it, thinking how convenient it would be. She could strap it to her head like a miner’s torch, leaving her hands free to dust the nest. However Rick was right. The lamp only worked intermittently. She settled for a large hand-held torch she’d found in the laundry. Using sticky-tape, she covered the torch with red cellophane. This created a red filter for the light, a colour far less provoking to the insects.
Full of dreadful impatience, Beth piled her tools of destruction into a bucket and headed out of the door to the wood pile. Leaving the bucket in the corner of the paddock, she ventured as close as she dared towards the nest, and tried to imagine the scene underground.
There was Zenandra, now frail and aged, still laying eggs, fussing proudly about the royal brood cells as the last hatchling queen escaped the prison of her pupal case. As she emerged, her delighted sisters thronged around, eager for the opportunity to tend her. Unsteady on her new legs, she clambered clumsily about the comb. The old queen herself nudged her daughter towards a group of her recently emerged royal sisters. The new queens occupied an area to themselves. A cordon of worker wasps protected them from the attention of the young drones, whose aggression and tendency to mount any other wasp drove every member of the hive to distraction. This rowdy behaviour was heightened by the knowledge that tomorrow, they and their sisters were to embark upon their nuptial flight. They would each fly a predetermined distance from the colony and then seek a mate. Incest was discouraged, but the workers informed the now housebound Zenandra that there were ample numbers of unrelated European wasps in the local vicinity. Her children enjoyed good prospects of finding eligible suitors.
The excited young royals caused mayhem by eagerly attempting to practice their flying within the overcrowded nest. The boldest ventured beyond the entrance, taking short flights into the baking air of the late-summer afternoon. Their devoted worker sisters were on hand to feed and water the exhausted youngsters upon their return. The nest took on a celebratory air, each wasp personally priding herself on the successful production of the next generation. After all, even the lowliest worker shared an identical genetic make-up with these young queens and drones. Through them, all hoped for immortality.
Beth made a conscious effort to clear these disturbing visions from her mind. Turning away she hurried to the house, determined not to visit such thoughts again. She spent an uneasy and impatient afternoon trying to fill in time until the sun set.
At three o’clock, Mark rang. Since finding out about his relationship problems, Beth no longer saw him as a threat to the children’s current living arrangements. In the circumstances he would be unable to successfully claim custody. But she was now privy to the secret of Helen’s affair and the rumours of his strange behaviour. In the light of this knowledge, Beth felt uncomfortable dealing with him. He’d not asked for a weekend with the kids since Christmas, although he still spoke to them frequently by phone. More and more, these phone chats included Beth. Mark seemed less self absorbed and more interested and affectionate towards his children. Although usually unwilling to engage him in conversation, she now felt a reluctant pity, which caused her to listen as he expressed his doubts about his private life and his career. He said that Helen and he, having grown apart, were jointly agreed upon an amicable separation. He talked of wanting a sea-change; of seeking a new, more satisfying path for his life. He questioned the value of the extravagant materialism he’d been chasing in recent years.
In some ways Beth was pleasantly surprised by this apparent change in her husband. He reminded her of the Mark of long ago; less ruthless, whose ambition had not yet blinded him to the importance of integrity and compassion. Lulled by his changed attitude, on one occasion she almost unburdened herself of her guilty secret and blurted out her suspicions about Helen’s infidelity. But something in Mark’s manner stopped her. At times he spoke of his new partner and child in a cold, resentful tone that belied his words. Beth couldn’t quite believe that the bitter, tearful young woman who’d confided her loneliness and pain the day of the wasp attack on Chance, could so readily accept a decision to separate. So Beth remained unconvinced that Mark was being genuine, or even truthful. At the back of her mind lurked the admittedly unsubstantiated tales told to her by Irene. A niggling suspicion warned her that Mark might only be telling her what he thought she wanted to hear.
Rick answered the phone and regaled his father, including much embellishment, with the story of his Bull-ant bite. After a few minutes he called out, “He wants you, Mum.”
She took the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi. I was wondering if I could come over and see the kids?”
“What. Now?”
“If it’s O.K. I haven’t seen them in such a long time.”
A pause. ‘Whose fault is that?’ thought Beth uncharitably.
“You know things are kind of up in the air between Helen and me at the moment. I was hoping to spend some time with them at your place?”
Beth thought of her mission to destroy the wasps. She imagined Mark offering to help, and then gloating over the exterminated nest. How ignorant he would be of her ambivalence. How painful it would be to witness his callous satisfaction with the completed task. No. If there was ever a time that Mark was not welcome, it was now. After checking that Rick was out of earshot, Beth lied rather unconvincingly about having to go out that night. She was surprised to hear real disappointment in his voice.
“Why don’t you come to see them on Saturday,” she heard herself say. His voice brightened.
“Great. I look forward to seeing you. You know I never stopped loving you Beth, don’t you. Goodbye until Saturday.”
Mark hung up. Beth stood, still holding the phone, too amazed to move. He loved her? This wouldn’t do at all. She realised that her offer of a sympathetic ear had been mistaken for something else. In an effort to facilitate Mark’s visit with his children, she’d unwittingly agreed to some sort of absurd date. The back of her neck began to prickle. For a moment she contemplated ringing him back to retract the offer, but then she thought better of it. It was only Wednesday after all. In a day or two she would ring him and make some excuse. There was plenty of time for that later.