ANTS: savage fire game almost ended in disaster

RUTHLESSLY efficient, ants would probably be ruling the Earth by now if they were not so tiny.

Black and red ants - our two most common species - measure only about four millimetres in length but their awesome energy and strength help them construct comparatively huge nests.

By living in colonies, they also achieve far greater protection than they ever could themselves and are a force to be reckoned with if attacked. Each colony comprises three distinct kinds of individual - a single, all powerful queen who lays the eggs; subordinate males who mate with the queen; and undeveloped females called workers who specialise in tasks such as guarding the nest or looking after the eggs.

Each summer, when the weather is humid, young winged ants burst out of the nest and take to the skies.

After mating, the males die but the females become individual queens ready to start their own colonies.

When she has bitten off her own wings, a solitary queen burrows into the soil to lay an initial batch of eggs.

These develop into worker ants which begin the enormous task of building another nest.

The pampered queen then concentrates on the only job left to her - laying more and more eggs until the nest becomes a teeming mass of life.

Ancient civilizations often revered ants and even in the Bible (Proverbs) the idle can read:"Go to the ant, thou sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise."

Children, too, are often enthralled by ants.

When I was a child, our gang used to spend hours tramping around local woods and moors specifically looking for ants' nests.

Every likely stone was flipped over to reveal either nothing at all or an impressive, seething ant city.

Unfortunately, we were not very politically correct.

One of our worst tricks was to take a platoon of red ants and introduce them forcibly into a nest of black ants.

The ensuing battle made the violent movie 'Gladiator' look like a picnic. Next, a cohort of black ants would be introduced into a red ants' nest and so on, until our cruel fascination was sated.

Among our number was an older boy, the only smoker.

He delighted in squirting lighter fuel into the nests.

That done, he would toss in a match to bring down a holocaust on the ants. This worked well enough until one fateful day when he let me have a go. Instead of concentrating the fuel on the nest I spilt some onto a surrounding mass of tinder dry gorse bushes.

Within a minute, the bushes had exploded into flames shooting 15ft into the air.

I was lucky not to be incinerated along with the ants.

It was only after staring, open mouthed, at my terrifying handiwork that I noticed everyone else had scarpered.

For days afterwards, I walked around with one side of my face painfully scorched red.

Served me right, too. I steered clear of ants' nests for a while after that.