Ant ventures

It is no wonder that poor Anthony Ant thought this world was just nothing but one scare after another. He seemed always to be grabbing at his things to save them and running off somewhere. Now he clutched at his basket and case and dashed under that loose piece of bark so fast that he dropped a sandwich. But he was thankful to get away after any fashion.

The great mountain of fur came slowly along the branch, and as the Ant watched he saw the mountain of fur had an enormous brushlike tail. Then he knew the thing was a Squirrel, and, however bad a Squirrel might be, it did not eat Ants, anyway. But it had feet and might step on Anthony, so the Ant kept under cover to see what happened.

The Squirrel did not speak, but went along the branch and gave a jump to another branch so far away that the Ant held his breath, thinking the Squirrel surely must have fallen. But not at all! Mr. Squirrel was safe and sound over on the other side of the tree before you could say his name, almost.

Then the Ant tried coming out once more, and this time he ate the sandwich he had dropped and a little more of the berry. Then he thought it might be a long time before he found another berry bush again, so he left the remainder of the berry to dry in the sun, since dried berries can be easily packed to carry, and there is no danger of juice getting over the other things in the basket. The taste is sweet for a long time too.

Anthony Ant thought he would better see what a tree was like now that he was in one, and after he had explored it he could go down to the ground and off around the remainder of the world. It would save time to see this tree now, and he would not have to climb another. One tree must be more or less like all the others. So he tried one branch after another. If he had thought he was alone in that tree after the Robin and the Squirrel had left it, he was very much mistaken. It was full of people—or rather, creatures.

The first one he met was a yellow Caterpillar different from any he had seen before. After that he saw a small Measuring Worm that tries to measure everything it travels over, inch by inch. Inchworm is its other name. Then came a funny Bug that looked at him out of the corners of his eyes in such a queer way that Anthony Ant knew it would be no use to try to talk to him, as the Bug did not look like one that wanted to talk to any one. Then came a branch with a lot of tiny red Spiders not much of any size at all. They were friendly enough and asked him to play tag with them, but he had no wish to play with them, as he was afraid he might step on some of them or knock them off the branch, and that would never do!

As Anthony Ant walked out on one of the leafiest branches of all, he saw where the Robin had once lived, for there was a large nest. He knew it at once by the pictures of nests his mother had shown him when he was a tiny baby Ant.

No one was at home in this nest. The young birds had been hatched many weeks before, and learned to fly, and were too big to have to be cuddled in nests any more. It was interesting to see a real nest, anyway, and the Ant began to think he had learned enough so far on his trip to make a book good enough for schools.

He was feeling pretty puffed up at being so smart, when all at once another thing happened to make him forget everything but running off to hide again. There was the worst hammering under him you could think of. Anthony Ant just scuttered up to a higher twig right away and peeked down.

“Tap, tap, tap!” went the noise, and my! It was nothing but another Bird. This one had the red on his head instead of on his breast like Mr. Robin. Since Anthony Ant knew that this hammering Bird was a Woodpecker and hunted for Grubs and Bugs in tree trunks, he crawled out on to the stem of a leaf where there was no chance for a big Bird to light, and just hid in a fold of the leaf until the Woodpecker flew away.

The next thing that Anthony Ant found was something that made him give a glad cry. It was a tiny green Worm—the very sort his mother had sent him after lots of times to get for the larder. This would be food for him for many meals, and, since Worms do not just walk into your lunch basket when you tell them to, Anthony watched his chance, gave a spring, and caught the small green Worm as Ants have been taught to catch small green Worms since Ants and Worms were made. Though it seems cruel, it really was one of the things not cruel at all, and Anthony Ant had a good supply of food for his journey for one while.

All the remainder of the day Anthony explored the great tree. Never had he dreamed there could be so many things in one tree before. It was like a big garden and menagerie and shop and city besides. Why, you could get almost anything you wanted in the tree! He found that some Ants that looked a bit different from his own family, and from any other Ants he had seen, were living there in the soft inner wood of the trunk, and not wishing any better sort of home than that. They seemed rather friendly and asked him to stop to see their colony.

“We must be sort of cousins,” said one of them, stopping in his work, “and I’ll look in our photograph album right away and see if we have your picture in it. Come into the parlor.”

Anthony went inside, but the place had a stuffy, woodeny, musty smell to him, and he was quite sure he would not like to be a tree Ant and have to live there.

They looked over the album, and oh me, oh my! There seemed to be no end to the cousins those tree Ants had! There were pictures of baby Ants, and growing-up Ants, and grown-up Ants. There were Ants photographed each alone, and with other Ants in groups; pictures of Ants at picnics, and at school, Ants in graduating classes, and at golf and tennis and baseball, and swimming, and fishing, and going abroad, and in the company of other notable Ants, “reading from left to right,” and all that sort of thing—but never a picture of any Ant like Anthony Ant, nor like any of his family and their own cousins.

“Nope,” said the tree Ant. “I’m afraid you don’t belong to us at all. But have some supper with us, anyway. We’d like to hear about other Ants that are not like us. It would be a pleasant change.”

So Anthony Ant stayed to supper and found, at any rate, they had a good cook, and the salad of cold boiled Dragon Fly was delicious.

Then the Ant said good-by and went out upon the tree highway again. He wanted to collect the dried berry for his lunch basket, and it might take some time to find where he had left it, as he had traveled pretty nearly all over the tree.

He found it before the twilight came, and, as it was too late to think of traveling far on the ground that night, he made up his mind to stay up in the tree until morning. The berry was not quite dry enough to pack, anyhow. So he crawled out of sight under the loose piece of bark where he had hidden from the Robin, and thought the morning sun would dry the berry in plenty of time for him to have it by the time he was ready to go down the tree.

It had been a busy day, and he was glad to settle himself early for a night’s sleep. Mr. Bat, coming out from a hollow in the tree, swooped close to Anthony Ant, but Anthony only smiled, and when an Owl in plain sight called out, “Hoot!” Anthony smiled again, and of course you know it was because he had the pass that said: