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“I’m looking for ants,” I explained.
Photo Gallery - High in the air
“Ants?” he asked, “I’ve got acrobat ants! Come see!”
The ducks and I followed him. He felt the way off his back porch,
running his rough hands along the brick walls of his house,
around the corner, and pushed his body behind a hedge. He
pulled back branches from a wax myrtle tree and revealed a pipe
leading into his house. On that pipe? A parade of acrobat ants,
their little heart-shaped fannies waving in the sun!
I tried to imagine how he could find this tiny treasure so deeply
hidden.
“How in the world could you tell these were acrobat ants?” I
asked.
“Because,” he said, and he slammed his hand down on the pipe,
smashing a couple of workers. When he lifted his hand, I watched
the stunned workers stumble about, smoothing their crumpled
legs and antennae, gradually going back to work. “You just can’t
squish the jimdurn things.”
He was right; acrobat ants seem to defy squishing.
Acrobat ants are a gift, a joy, and you can find them almost
anywhere you’d imagine in the United States, from swamps and
forests to your kitchen cabinet. Three species of acrobat ants are
common in the United States: Crematogaster ashmeidi,
A forager up in the trees, feeding on nectar. - © Alex Wild
Crematogaster lineolata, and Crematogaster cerasi.
Crematogaster cerasi and another acrobat ant species,
Crematogaster laeviuscula, have been found in New York City.
These species can be hard to tell apart just by looking at them.
About half the size of an apple seed, they range in color from
rusty bodies with dark brown/black abdomens to a deep reddishblack
all over.
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