Game Over

Chapter 37





“WHAT ARE YOU doing here, Daniel? Why weren’t you in class this morning?”

“Um, you know, immigration stuff.”

He looked me up and down, and, though I’ve seen more convinced expressions, he nodded. He had a notepad in front of him with formulas scribbled all over it.

“What are they doing?” I asked, bending down to look at the ants.

“Their favorite thing—eating,” he said.

The ants were swarming over a lump of something white and were methodically carving it into transportable pieces that they carried back to the nest entrance one by one.

“What was it?” I asked.

“A turnip,” he replied.

“Good thing turnips don’t have nervous systems, huh?” I said. “That looks like it might hurt.”

“Yes,” said Kildare, looking up at me. “It’s definitely a very lucky thing for turnips and anything else that ends up in front of a hungry colony of ants if it’s unable to feel pain.”

I nodded grimly, trying not to imagine what it might be like to be stung to death and then carved up into a few million bite-size pieces. “It’s amazing how coordinated they are. How they work so well together.”

“They use pheromones,” Kildare explained. “They lay down scents and other chemical markers that affect each others’ behavior. As social communications systems go, it’s unrivaled. They can even stalk and kill prey thousands of times larger than themselves.”

“Of course, Myrmecina nipponica don’t do a whole lot of hunting, do they? Aren’t they pretty common house ants here in Japan?”

He looked at me with surprise. “This terrarium isn’t labeled. How did you know the name of this species?”

“Big Edward O. Wilson fan, dedicated Discovery Channel viewer, and budding entomologist, I guess,” I improvised.

“Me, too.” He smiled and turned back to the ants. “Actually, you’re right about their dietary habits,” he went on. “More than ninety-eight percent of what ants eat is vegetative or already dead. Some species can and do hunt other living animals, but their reputation as predators is grossly exaggerated.”

“And that’s a good thing,” I said, “considering they represent more than fifteen percent of the biomass of all creatures on Earth—more than ten times that of all living humans—or they might eat us all up.”

“Yes,” he said, looking up at me again with a curious smile. “It’s a very good thing.”

Just then, the door opened and Professor Kuniyoshi came in with two students.

“Ah, Kildare,” he said. “How’s the colony?”

“Very healthy, Professor,” replied Kildare. “I expect they’ll soon be fledging.”

“Good news, good news!” beamed the teacher, taking the two students to his desk to review some papers.

Kildare remained focused on the ants, perfectly content not to talk. I couldn’t help liking him, but he was definitely an intense kid. There’s an old Japanese saying—still waters run deep—and something told me I hadn’t a clue what lay in the depths of Kildare’s personality.