26
HUDDLED IN A NATURAL HOLE between two roots of a gallberry bush, the tiny Woodland Colony had survived the destruction of its overbearing neighbor. The kill zone in which the Supercolony died, now still and silent, had stopped just short of the Woodlander retreat along the shore of Dead Owl Cove. When first the Trailhead and then the Streamside Colonies ruled this region, their scouts sometimes ventured far enough into the forest to pass close by the Woodlander nest entrance. They never found the little colony. But a few came near, and often enough to frighten the inhabitants. The Woodlanders stayed close to home, forced to survive on a few small scraps of food, mostly dead insects. After Supercolony took over, their situation worsened. Forays by Supercolony scouts were more frequent than those of the earlier colonies, and some approached dangerously near. Woodlander foragers were forced to stay still closer to the entrance of their little nest. Even then, a few were picked off by the Supercolony scouts.
At the time of the destruction of Supercolony, the Woodland Colony was also dying, although in a different way. The number of workers had dropped from close to a hundred in the Trailhead Colony era to the twenty that huddled inside now. There were no soldiers at all. The Queen was starving. Her ovaries had shriveled and she no longer laid eggs. The death rate of workers was inexorably rising, while the birth rate fell to zero. The little colony, it seemed, could not last the remainder of the warm season as a close neighbor of Supercolony.
Then came the moving tree trunks, the ant gods, who miraculously wiped Supercolony off the face of antdom. Their lethal pressure was lifted instantly from the imperiled Woodlanders. A scattering of Supercolony scouts had still been exploring outside the kill zone when the gods came, but they offered no further threat. All died within hours, as soon as they tried to return home and unknowingly touched the still-toxic soil. Now, within a week, not a trace of their scent remained around the Woodlander nest.
Woodlander workers, timid at first, began to venture farther than ever before from their nest. They found more and better food, mostly in the form of dead or easily captured insects of the kind preempted earlier by their dominant neighbors. Also newly available in generous quantity were droplets of sugary excrement that had fallen from aphids living on nearby understory plants.
By late September, with the weather still warm and the vegetation green, the ovaries of the Woodland Queen revived. She was laying eggs, and healthy young larvae filled the brood chamber of the hidden nest.
By the following April, with the last of the winter's chill lifted from the deeper recesses of the soil and the spring renewal of plant growth well under way, the Woodlander foragers began traveling farther afield. The colony resumed its growth with greater vigor. In only a matter of days, the first Woodlander scouts entered the wasteland that was once the Supercolony territory. The pesticide had entirely dissipated from the kill zone, and insects and other small invertebrates were infiltrating the area to explore it on their own. Many were easy prey for the Woodlanders.
Wasteland it had been, but now it was like a newly planted garden, because ironically, it had flourished from the former occupation by Supercolony. Its soil, having been aerated by the tunnels and chambers of their nests and then enriched by their decomposing bodies, was ideal for plant growth. Grasses and herbs native to the longleaf pine flatland reasserted themselves among the species that had survived the ant Armageddon. By June, a resurgent ground vegetation formed a thick green carpet over the entirety of the old nest surface. The fastest growing of the summer herbs came into full bloom by early June, and a full cast of pollinators visited to serve them--flower beetles, syrphid flies, sweat bees, wood nymph butterflies, sulphurs, whites, blues, skippers, swallowtails swarmed in as though there had never been an episode of violence and death.
By the height of summer, the grassroots jungle teemed with hundreds of insect species, variously adapted to every major niche. A multiplicity of spiders had settled there to feed on them. Individual species snared their prey in orb webs or tangle webs, or sprinted out from silk-spun tunnels to pounce on unsuspecting passersby. A few lay motionless and camouflaged on flower heads, waiting to ambush bees and other pollinators landing there. The arachnids came in many shapes and sizes, from linyphiid dwarf spiderlings less than a pinhead in size to wolf spiders half the span of a human hand.
Spiders, although wingless, were strangely among the first animals to colonize the regenerating Supercolony tract. A few walked in, but even more oddly, other pioneers arrived by ballooning. The method is widespread and ancient among their kind. When an immature spider possessing this ability wishes to travel a long distance, it crawls to an unrestricted site on a blade of grass or twig of a bush, lifts the rear part of its body to point the spinnerets at the tip upward, and lets out a line of silk. The delicate little thread is the spiderling's kite. The air current lifts and pulls at it until the young spider, feeling the tension, gradually lengthens the thread. When the strength of the pull exceeds its own body weight, it lets go with all eight feet and sets sail. A flying spiderling can reach thousands of feet of altitude and travel miles downwind. When it wishes to descend, it pulls in the silk thread and eats it, millimeter by millimeter, heading for a soft if precarious landing. The risk it takes offers good odds. Sailing aloft under its silk balloon, the spiderling can reach land still uncrowded by competing spiders. Such openness, for a while at least, was the condition of the newly vacated Supercolony territory.