How did I know what the ants had for dinner last Monday? It is odd that I should have known, but I’ll tell you how it happened.

I was sitting under a big pine tree, high up on a hillside. The hillside was more than seven thousand feet above the sea, and that is higher than many mountains which people travel hundreds of miles to look at. But this hillside was in Colorado, so there was nothing wonderful in being up so high.

I had been watching the great mountains with snow on them, and the great forests of pine trees—miles and miles of them—so close together that it looks as if you could lie down on their tops and not fall through; and my eyes were tired with looking at such great, grand things, so many miles off.

So I looked down on the ground where I was sitting, and watched the ants which were running about everywhere, as busy and restless as if they had the whole world on their shoulders.

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Suddenly I saw a tiny caterpillar, which seemed to be bounding along in a very strange way. In a second more I saw an ant seize hold of him and begin to drag him off.

The caterpillar was three times as long as the ant, and his body was more than twice as large round as the biggest part of the ant’s body.

“Ho! ho! Mr. Ant,” said I, “you needn’t think you’re going to be strong enough to drag that fellow very far.”

Why, it was about the same thing as if you or I should drag off a calf, which was kicking and struggling all the time; only that the calf hasn’t half so many legs to catch hold of things with as the caterpillar had.

Poor caterpillar! how he did try to get away! But the ant never gave him a second’s time to take a good grip of anything; and he was cunning enough, too, to drag him on his side, so that he couldn’t use his legs very well.

Up and down, and under and over stones and sticks;decoration133decoration in and out of tufts of grass; up to the very top of the tallest blades, and then down again; over gravel and sand, and across bridges of pine needles from stone to stone; backward all the way ran that ant, dragging the caterpillar after him.

I watched him very closely, thinking, of course, he must be going toward his house. Presently he darted up the trunk of a pine tree.

“Dear me!” said I, “ants don’t live in trees! What does this mean?”

The bark of the tree was all broken and jagged, and full of seams twenty times as deep as the height of the ant’s body. But he didn’t mind; down one side and up the other he went.

They must have been awful chasms to him, and yet he never once stopped or went a bit slower. I had to watch the ant very closely, not to lose sight of him altogether.

I began to think that he was merely trying to kill the caterpillar; that, perhaps, he didn’t mean to eat him, after all. How did I know but some ants mightdecoration134decoration hunt caterpillars, just as some men hunt deer, for fun, and not at all because they need food?

If I had been sure of this, I would have spoiled Mr. Ant’s sport for him very soon, you may be sure, and set the poor caterpillar free. But I never heard of an ant’s being cruel; and if it were really for dinner for his family that he was working so hard, I thought he ought to be helped, and not hindered.
hawk and two birds

Just then I heard a sharp cry overhead. I looked up, and there was an enormous hawk, sailing round indecoration135decoration circles, with two small birds flying after him. They were pouncing down on his head, and then darting away, and all the time making shrill cries of fright and hatred.

I knew very well what that meant. Mr. Hawk was also out trying to do some marketing for his dinner. He had his eye on some little birds in their nest............