Ant Los Angeles

When I was a child, Los Angeles burgeoned into a geographically large city.  Some wags thought it funny to post home-made signs, ever further out, that said “Los Angeles city limits.”  Eventually, according to the signs, Los Angeles extended from San Diego up to Santa Barbara, and west to San Bernardino.  Once I saw a “Welcome to Los Angeles” sign on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada.

Yesterday Ox and I walked up part of Bear Den Mountain.  On these sorties we pay attention to how we feel; when either feels we have gone halfway to our physical limit, we tell the other person that we are halfway to tired.  We stop then, and turn downhill.  Yesterday we made it all the way up to Ant Los Angeles.

We started walking up this mountain about 35 years ago.  If there were ant mounds then, we didn’t notice them.  Eventually an ant mound appeared, and the next year there were more.  Every year since Ant Los Angeles has grown.

Ant Los Angeles now covers a square acre, maybe acres.  During the warm seasons these are busy cities, with ants scurrying everywhere.  Bears find ant feasts in these mounds – an occasional flat-topped mound tells that story.  Weather pokes holes in the mounds.  The Allegheny mound ants just carry on.

In the winter, except for the occasional sentry, the ants hunker underground.  The ant mounds are roughly dome-shaped; they're the terracotta color of our good Virginia clay; they are one or two feet high and up to a yard in diameter. They are said to extend about four feet underground.

The mound dirt looks friable, and the mounds are always covered with young grasses around the base.  I read that ant mounds are connected with underground tunnels and that the mounds support many queens.  I read that the ants clear the surrounding vegetation by biting plants and injecting formic acid into them.  The clearing allows the sun to warm the mounds to help incubate the larvae.  I imagine that the ants plant the grasses on their mounds to provide some camouflage.

Spring has reached the mountain only in the greening of small, close to the ground, weeds and grasses.  I will know spring has fully come to Bear Den Mountain when Ant Los Angeles' surface becomes again a busy city.