Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [28]
While my sister and I did our best to ignore the clouds of peripatetic pollen pickers, the rest of our party loaded supplies onto their backs preparatory to setting off. There are no roads to the Ivindo scientific station, no airstrip, not even room enough to land a helicopter. Food, medicine, scientific equipment, computers, furniture—everything goes in or comes out on the back of a porter. As the column formed up, I felt as if I was stepping back in time to the Africa of a hundred years ago, when every expedition’s equipment was transported overland on the backs of hired porters. In contrast to my imaginings, the digital watches and occasional rock T-shirt the men wore placed them firmly in the present day.
It is a seven-hour walk (for a healthy human being in acceptable physical condition) from the trailhead to the research station. Much of this is uphill, with the worst part being the first few miles. Steep, muddy, and hacked out of raw hillside jungle, it’s a tough enough march in good weather. In rain, it inculcates twisted ankles and broken bones. Thankfully, the only moisture we had to contend with was preserved in the mud, in small puddles of standing water, and in the perspiration that was already streaming down our bodies.
Our relief was unrestrained when we were told we had reached the top of the “hill” and that while more upslope remained, it would be nothing like what we had just conquered. Thus refreshed in spirit if not in body, we resumed the trek.
“Stop.”
Like the porters, our lead guide was a member of a local tribe. I moved up to stand alongside him and follow his gaze into the jungle ahead. The rain forest here was comparatively open. Large trees atop the plateau were more widely spaced than what we had encountered at the bottom of the canyon. This allowed more sunlight to reach the forest floor, resulting in a greater profusion of bushes and other lesser growths. My gaze fell somewhat, and my attention was drawn to what I first took to be a trick of the sunlight.
The forest floor appeared to be in motion.
“Driver ants.” The guide flashed a learned smile. “Do you know what to do?”
I knew army ants and tangarana ants and their cousins from South and Central America, but this was the first time I had been confronted with their Old World counterparts. Furthermore, this immense colony was not marching, but foraging. That meant that instead of moving in a single, rigid, predictable column, easy enough to avoid or simply jump over, they had spread out over a wide area. Its limits were defined, but extensive. The underbrush was too thick and the ground still too steep and uneven to allow us to go around the colony. Besides, in hunting mode, the ants would be on every trunk, branch, and leaf. Pushing through the brush meant one would inevitably get them on hands, torso—maybe even one’s face.
The glistening red bodies completely covered the trail ahead of us and extended far into the forest on both sides. I admitted to our guide that no, I did not know what to do, and if he had any suggestions for how best to avoid the nightmare swarm directly in front of us, I would gladly take them.
“Avoid?” His expression turned querulous. “Too difficult, take too long. This is what you do.”
Turning from me, he rushed forward and sprinted straight down the ant-carpeted section of trail. The distance from one side of the foraging colony to the other was at least ten yards. Halting on the far side, once again on an ant-free section of the track, he paused to slap and pick at himself.
My sister had come up alongside me. Carol had shown her mettle and determination ever since our transfer flight from Douala, Cameroon, to Port-Gentil, Gabon, on an otherwise empty Dornier through a raging tropical thunderstorm. She was game