Leiningen vs. The Ants Carl

LEININGEN vs. THE ANTS

Carl Stephenson's short story Leiningen vs. The Ants is a fictional story of an epic struggle between man and an adversary who is tiny, primitive, and weak by comparison, but whose strength in numbers almost prevails over the best human efforts. Leiningen is a settler in the Brazilian wilderness who, at the time of the story, had operated a successful plantation and employed hundreds of natives. During that time, he demonstrated considerable resolve and ingenuity in overcoming various obstacles, but then finds himself facing one that gives every reasonable indication of being insurmountable.

The adversary Leiningen faces is the dreaded Army Ant of the Brazilian Rain Forest, which, in swarms of many millions of individual ants, are capable of overrunning Leiningen's entire plantation. The ants are as big as a person's thumb and possess sharp, powerful pincers and venomous stingers. They easily overwhelm even the largest of wildlife that cannot escape their advance and Leiningen watches them completely consume a live stag in six minutes. The native workers employed by Leiningen are terrified of the ants and want to abandon the plantation to escape with their lives but Leiningen manages to lead by example and convinces them to stay despite their tremendous fears.

At first, Leiningen protects his plantation by constructing an elaborate series of moats and artificial damns to surround three sides of his plantation, going so far as to trim any vegetation or twigs overhanging the water that could assist an advancing army of ants cross from one makeshift shore to the other. Leiningen also uses petrol (gasoline) trenches which can be set on fire if the ants manage to pass the first lines of defense. Those measures work initially, but the ants still threaten the plantation and every living thing on it by sheer force of numbers. No matter how many ants drown in Leiningen's moats or are burned in his lakes of petrol, more fill in behind them to take their place.

The flooding of the artificial damn and the strategic burning of the petrol begins to lose effect because so many dead or dying ants begin to pile up in large clumps that their living counterparts are able to use them as bridges over the water. At that point, Leiningen realizes that the only way to save his plantation and the lives of his workers is to flood the entire plantation while they take refuge in the highest part of the property. To do so, Leiningen must get to a control valve mechanism that is hundreds of yards away from the remaining safe area of the plantation and already completely covered by the ants.