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& Order knows, when you push aside the leaf litter in the parks of
Manhattan you almost always reveal bodies.
When I arrived in New York I found James in a classroom at
Columbia in front of one of the groups of students that we would
lead out into the woods. All told, James would lecture to 550
students, each and every new undergraduate, before sending
them off, graduated out into nature. James lectured to this
particular group about conservation, discovery, the romantic lives
of ants (tawdry), and the frontier at which they found themselves.
He explained that the ants and other species of the city
performed services. Without the ants and dung beetles, New York
would be knee deep in dog poop, cookie crumbs and dead
pigeons and roaches. “These are the undertakers, farmers, and
predators that keep the city alive.”
When James was done, each student was handed the tools
necessary for Ivy-league success, or at least success out in the
ivy. Each group had a plant identification guide, a sheet on which
to put leaf litter in order to search for ants, and an “aspirator,” a
device into which they would suck any ants they saw. Aspirators
consist of a jar and two flexible tubes. One tube leads from the
ant to the jar, the other tube leads up between the lips of whoever
is using it. When an aspirator is working properly, a piece of filter
paper keeps the ants from being inhaled. When one is not, well,
you get to learn the taste of ants. Some taste like candy. Others
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