The marvellous energy of ants

Damien Enright on how the amazing energy of ants is still a sight to behold.

THE energy of ants! I have always been fascinated by the Herculean energy of these creatures. I remember watching them for an hour at a time as a child — I think it was in a chalet rented for a few weeks in Inchydoney, Co Cork, one long-ago summer — and being very disappointed when my father poured boiling water into their nest because they were invading the kitchen. Pissmires, they were called, and they were small and red, and could bite one if annoyed.

A few mornings ago, when I went for my wake-up dip in the pool at our rented cottage in the high Alpujarras mountains of southern Spain, I crossed long ant-avenues, three-inch-wide corridors snaking across the weedy garden, thoroughfares as clear of debris as motorways, with busy columns of ants going both ways. Those heading for the nest bore straws and pieces of leaves.

These were no house-invading, or pants-invading, ants, but an outdoor species, busy harvesting. I measured one of their highways and found it was forty feet long, with an earthen slope midway which, for an ant, would have been the equivalent of Carrantouhill. They were small, a quarter of an inch long, so they walked almost 4,000 times their own length on each return journey. The straws they carried were six times as long as themselves, rather like you or me carrying a 33 foot ladder for two miles at a fast trot and up and down Carrantouhill. How amazing, how marvellous, the energy of ants! The following day, we began our journey home, first south to spend a few days on the Med. near Gibraltar, then north to the Spanish/French frontier, then across France to Dieppe, then to the UK for a few days and afterwards across England and Wales until, finally, Fishguard, Rosslare and home.

The Mediterranean beaches well deserve their reputation. The sun is warm, the sand is white and the sea is cool. On Sundays, the local Spanish come and I heard grumbles from an Englishman at the way they camp, setting up their tents and paella cookers on the very edge of the sea so that to reach the water, in places, one must either negotiate cat´s-cradles of guy ropes or take the long way around over the foot-scorching sand. But, what the hell, Spain is their country and these are their beaches. I feel privileged to be here.

Opposite the apartment where we are spending a few days compliments of my brother in the marina at Soto Grande in southern Spain, a pontoon wide enough for two cars extends into the sea. On either side of this pontoon-avenue huge motorcruisers and yachts are reversed into moorings, some twenty craft on each side for the length of it, some of the cruisers so wide that they occupy two berths. There are many other such pontoon-avenues protruding into the marina, each with its serried ranks of high-tech top-end craft. The opulence of this enclave is almost embarrassing. I might say my brother is not a yacht owner: he runs a business here.

On one side of our adjacent pontoon, lie the great, white cruisers, gleaming plastic objects, hydrodynamically-shaped water-gliders facing the exit to the sea. On the other side is a forest of tall masts, with sleek, ocean-going yachts below them.

How changed is this coast from when I first saw it in the early nineteen sixties! In sixty-one, I stood at the mouth of the Guadiaro river and looked east towards the ancient coastguard tower guarding the beaches: only miles away, across the mouth of the Med, lies Morocco, the old enemy.

Between the river mouth and the tower there was no settlement whatsoever, only a few fisherman´s shacks, coastal wetlands and sand.

Now, there is the wealth of Creoseus in property on land and water. Trade in real estate and boats are the raison d’étre of life here.

Across the Straits, in the Moroccan countryside, only the exceptional house has a car outside it, and the farmers plough with mules. Almost nightly, black Africans without a penny to their name risk the voyage across the ten mile strip of water and no wonder. With good eyes, on a clear night, one can see the glittering opulence of the west.