photography

Ants…and Antlions.

Yes, it’s all fun and whatnot for ants, until they cross paths with the Antlion. An extremely patient hunter, the antlion digs a spiralling hole, and waits. And waits. And Then: Whammo!

The French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre wrote that “The Ant-lion makes a slanting funnel in the sand. Its victim, the Ant, slides down the slant and is then stoned, from the bottom of the funnel, by the hunter, who turns his neck into a catapult.”

The predatory actions of the larvae have attracted attention throughout history, and antlions have been mentioned in literature since classical times. {wikipedia}

Percy and Sparky.

The supreme beings of dogdom

“What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind…

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul’s immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind…”

“Beyond that, he has roused us, among thoughts of universe or universes and of our smallness in the majestic vague, to the awareness of “our private immensity” in the presence of those particles of which there are always more and more, and of which we are finally constructed…”

“But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.”

{courtesy of Wordsworth, and Gustav E}