Although they are shiny and attractive, pennies get left places and abandoned. Do not use this content for school reports. I may have made some information up on the spot.

Call me Dan, because that’s my name. If you were expecting a well muscled middle-aged businessman in a black suit and red tie, clean-shaven with short black hair, you are mistaken. I am thin, reddish-orange with compound eyes, have six legs and three body segments, antennae and a pair of mandibles. I am proud to be an ant, standing for, “Astute Natural Trailblazers”.

Any human might look at an ant and exclaim, “Gross!”. Humans think ants are pests and uncivil. Who is making nuclear weapons?! The same people who started WWI, Humans! You would think they would learn but they started WWII. Ants are the civil ones here. Although humans are the dominant race, they do a pretty pathetic job. Humans are a disgrace to their position!

I thought about humans and their bad habits as I scurried around a large shoe print in the wet sand. Running at top speed, about 855 millimeters per second, if we were the size of a small human I would travel 583 kilometers per hour. Try to beat that! 

Grass towered above the subhuman world. Insects were hovering, buzzing and crawling all around the yard, but I was not on hunting duty. I was a scavenger. The job stinks.

When your chore is scavenging, finding food left behind by others is your job. This normally includes handling leftovers. I am sure you have had leftovers in your life. Do they taste good? Not always, because they comprise dead bugs, food that has already been in someone’s mouth, or raisins (I hate raisins, but it is the number one food humans drop). But as an ant, I do every job to completion.

The shoe prints in the sandy soil were getting fresher. The others and I were tracking a human to see if it had recklessly dropped some food. My antennae crackled.

“Dan, veer right.” commanded Philip, the leader of the patrol. Antennas are useful in communication between other bugs in similar classification, including bees, wasps, flies, and other ants. It’s like having a walky-talky on your head. Except without the buttons, those would be hard to press. Strangely, we also get human’s internet connections. That is why we get so smart. I moved to the right and scurried over the emerald colored hose. “We will follow the hose till the tamarind tree. Will you pass that on?”  

“Yes.”

I crawled off and made for the nearest elevated area. I picked a shriveled up teak tree leaf. On the leaf I could see the yard, and beyond it, the concrete patio from which we had come. At the elevated height, I could get a further range signal. I sent the message from my antenna with a buzz,

“To the tamarind tree. Follow the hose!”

“Ok,”

“Yah, OK”

“Got it, shall I pass it on?”

“Yes, Jon, that would be nice.”

The sun beat down on our little band, turning us into amber beads. We sped along the hose in a line. Our destination ahead of us. The grass grew tall and thick around us but opened out into a dusty flat. The wind picked the sand up and flung it in our faces. I started humming my theme song that I made up to make the scenery more dramatic.

“I thought you would never come!”, Philip said, coming to meet us.

“So why are we so far out from home? We will be lucky if we even get to a garrison outpost by nightfall, and I’ll bet you there will be no beetle burgers there!” I exclaimed.

“This, Dan, is worth much more than beetle burgers at home base.” 

“What did you find that could possibly be better than beetle burgers? A secure impenetrable nest door?”

“Actually, I did find a secure impenetrable nest door,”

“Philip, people don’t just leave good doors lying around!”

“They do, Dan. Often in fact if you know what kind of door I’m talking about. This way!” he led us, a party of 18, forward around a penny!

“What!”

“Don’t worry guys, its radius matches that of our nest, and with a sliding mechanism we will have an impenetrable door against other less intelligent ants. I know what you are thinking, Dan ‘how will you get in’, don’t worry, I’ll help you!” Philip joked. I made a face of mock rage. He always thought of the most clever insults. I would put this back in his face!

“W-well, Philip, I think your… head is too big for your thorax,” “Wow,” I thought, “that was all I could think of!”

We had found the penny. We might win the war with the red ants now that we had a device to keep their ranks out. The penny, the Great Penny, would save our species!

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