Battle Royal on city sidewalks.

Two foreigners, both on Canadian soil, accidentally met each other only a few days ago.  They scattered, one to its home to tell the reigning monarch that invaders may come and the other to its own territory to share information on potential new resources.  The initial conflict was a minor skirmish, there were no fatalities or even injuries.  That was all about to change.

It wasn't long before the first members of the rival faction showed up.  Lookouts, aware that there may be trouble, were the first to encounter them and the violence soon began.  While some defended their territory with all they possessed, others informed the rest who were peacefully going about their business.  They all dropped what they were doing and took up the banner in a call to arms.

At first, it was the intruders that were victorious.  Their numbers steadily grew and soon they overwhelmed the few that stood behind to protect what was theirs.  The bodies of the fallen littered the region they called home.  As the army marched towards their ultimate goal, the destruction of the incumbents and annexation of foreign territory, they discovered an increasingly stiff resistance.  It seemed victory would not come so easily.

Pavement ants, an invasive species from Europe, are tiny colony insects that nest under surface concrete structures.  They are very fond of sidewalks, and are sometimes called sidewalk ants, for they dig shallow burrows beneath the rocky overburdon and use cracks and cut marks to gain access to the surface.  There they forrage for whatever food sources they can find.  They are very fond of sugary foods; they soon find any litter leftovers from human consumption and extract whatever nutrients they can.  Hundreds of them, even thousands, will quickly clean out any such discovery.

Pavement ants do not tolerate other colonies in their midsts.  Workers search far and wide for food sources and are quickly killed if they stumble upon another nest.  However, in the eternal hunt for food, a rival colony may attack another and the conflict spawns thousands of dead ants.  Although the battle zone may only be a few square inches in size, there are tens of thousands of individuals on both sides fighting for their lives.  Some dying to protect home and others dying in the hunt for new resources.

When such a battle takes place, a thick mob of ants appears as you can see in the above photo.  I have come across a patch of such pandemonium two times now.  The melee continues unabated for a few days and then all evidence of the battle disappears.  It seems that the victors get to keep the fallen as a tasty reward for their efforts.  I shot the above image a couple of days ago with my cell phone camera; I am sure the whole ordeal has since concluded.  After the other "war" I saw finished, there has been no further evidence of any repeated conflict.

Peace exhists, as with humans, only until the next war begins.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com