Anthill

by Edward Osborne Wilson

  Yours sincerely,

  Raphael Semmes Cody

  Innocently penned, perhaps, but probably a little less than innocently, and if so, then to defensible purpose. Raff had used the right words, written in the right tone. Only later did I learn, and should not have been surprised, that the essay and letter had been edited by Louise Simmons, his English teacher at Nokobee County Regional High School, an M.S. from FSU's School of Education and a fierce advocate of correct grammar and sentence structure.

  I could do no other than acquiesce, of course, and with enthusiasm. I wrote on my own to the admissions committee to suggest that they should ignore his grades at the high school. Raphael Semmes Cody, I testified, admittedly has participated in no team sport, or sport of any kind. He plays no musical instrument. He has never been more than two hundred miles from Clayville, Alabama. But then, one recalls, Henry David Thoreau was similarly limited. Like Thoreau, young Cody walks to a different drummer's beat. As his Eagle Scout record shows, he is ambitious and hardworking in a unique way, with goals of his own choosing. I predict that among the ten thousand students admitted this year to FSU, he will someday be one of the alumni of whom this university will be most proud.

  The result of all this overkill was that in the following February Raff was thrilled to receive the fat letter of early admission to the university. It further informed Raff that he was invited to join the Florida State University Honors Program, designed to provide gifted students with opportunities for creative work.

  For their part, Marcia and Ainesley were delighted that their son would stay close to home. Only Uncle Cyrus protested: "Why not the University of Alabama, my own alma mater?" But he was quickly mollified. FSU was altogether okay, and what counted anyway was Raff's planned admission to law school down the line. Cyrus was satisfied that he had brought at least one worthy male heir into the Mobile Semmeses.

  In the second week of September Ainesley and Marcia accompanied Raff to Tallahassee in the latest version of Ainesley's red pickup, and helped Raff pick his way through the crowd of students to his assigned dormitory room. Raff pledged to come home regularly. If they could believe anything he promised, they could believe that. They had Nokobee on their side as a powerful attraction.

  Alicia and I joined the three Codys for dinner at a small roadside restaurant, the kind often called a cafe, in Sopchoppy, just outside of Tallahassee. We shared in the all-you-can-eat offering of fried mullet, turnip greens, and the small balls of cornmeal and chopped onions called hushpuppies. All chose sweet-tea, or else failed to decline it, forgetting that in the real South you are served unsweetened tea only if you request it. Ainesley chastely avoided beer or worse. As darkness fell, we watched through the window as Mexican free-tailed bats swooped in and out of the lighted parking area. They cut swaths through the gathering insect hordes, mercifully including mosquitoes among their prey. In this atmosphere of complete Southern authenticity, I promised Raff's parents to help him and let them know if he was having any special trouble at the university.

  When Raff arrived at Florida State, he found it still surrounded by an abundance of natural open space. That was the case even though the campus had grown to become a small city in itself, with forty thousand students, twenty-five hundred faculty members, and thousands more of supporting staff. From our conversations at Nokobee, he knew he could drive away from the center of FSU in any direction, and within half an hour find extensive natural habitats of all kinds that grace the Florida Panhandle. There were longleaf pine mesic flatwoods, longleaf pine and turkey oak flats, turkey oak sandhills, and hardwood-covered steephead ravines to the north. Traveling west, you encountered the series of floodplain forests that border the Gulf-bound coastal rivers. To the south awaited some of the best-preserved coastal wetlands in the southern United States. Immediately adjacent to the FSU campus was the magnificent Apalachicola National Forest itself, containing most of the principal habitats of the central coastal plain.

  During his first two weeks at FSU, Raff was swept along by receptions, orientation tours, and introductory class meetings. As quickly as he could manage, however, he made an appointment to see me.

  Exactly to the minute of the assigned appointment there came a soft rap on my office door. The Raphael Semmes Cody who entered was different from the one I had known. He walked stiffly and erect, rather like a soldier reporting for duty. His handshake was sweaty. This was not the easygoing kid I knew at Nokobee. He was responding, it was clear, to my professional persona in an intimidating new environment.

  As he stood there, it was "Yessir" to this and "Yessir" to that after almost every sentence I uttered. That needed correcting. So I hugged him, showed him to a chair, and pulled mine over to face him.

  "Welcome to Florida State, Raff," I said in as warm a tone as I could summon. "I'm so glad you're here. I couldn't be happier to see you."

  I peppered him with questions about his family and first impressions of FSU, in order to bring him out and put him further at ease. And I congratulated him on his admission to the Honors Program.

  "Oh," I added, "I hope you'll find time to join us at some of the special lectures and symposia scheduled this year. It doesn't matter that you're just a freshman. You'll be real welcome. Of course, I mean if you can find time, Raff."

  I studied him closely as we talked. Small in stature, about Ainesley's height, perhaps five-nine, but slightly heavier than his father--at a guess 140 pounds. Because I'd read a biography of his namesake, I knew he was, coincidentally, about the same size as the original Admiral Semmes. His face was thin, more Marcia than Ainesley. His hair, groomed in his Sunday best, was newly trimmed, brushed, and parted, a condition almost never seen at Nokobee. It was light brown in color, almost blond, perhaps enhanced through exposure to the sun of the Florida summer.

  He was dressed in what I took to be his best clothes: dark lightweight wool pants, mauve cotton sports shirt, and a newly pressed linen jacket. The latter I was never to see again. On its lapel--and I liked him for wearing it--was a small silver Eagle Scout pin. He wore off-white shoes and thick white cotton socks. Except perhaps for the jacket and lapel pin, he would go unnoticed, I thought, in the mob of students flowing continuously along the university mall outside. For that matter, given his youthful appearance, he would fit in any high school hall in Florida.

  Within half an hour, yielding to my efforts, Raff began to relax. "Dr. Norville" changed back to the honorary "Uncle Fred" of Nokobee. Because I had in mind most of what he knew about natural history, our relationship soon turned from one of professor and student to that of senior and junior colleagues.

  The tribal bonds of naturalists, you should know, are woven out of war stories from past field trips. No war stories, no bonds. A good starting point on the Gulf Coastal Plain is the impressive variety of poisonous snakes. Everyone talks about poisonous snakes, and it seems that all who grew up in the rural South have personal stories to tell. For naturalists in particular, such accounts make ideal war stories, and, more importantly, scientific war stories. As Raff already knew, I'd survived two diamondback rattler strikes, and nearly died from the second one. My scary experience considerably outpointed his near-miss with a cottonmouth moccasin.

  "Let me tell you, Raff," I said, smiling, "if you've got to get bitten by a rattlesnake, pick something other than a diamondback. I'd make it a pygmy rattlesnake. That's the smallest species there is, you know. The worse you'll get is maybe a swollen arm or leg for a week. But let's keep this serious. I'd say the best advice I could give you or anybody else is just don't mess with poisonous snakes, period. If you have to handle one for some reason or other, and even if you're pretty sure it's not poisonous, always use a snake stick and a bag."

  "I just try not even to get near the poisonous kinds," Raff said.

  I didn't believe that, figuring he was a lot like me when I was his age, but I didn't say so.

  "Fine," I responded. "And it's always a good idea when you're in the field to have someone
with you. Oh, and be sure you're aware of the nearest hospital that has a supply of antivenins."

  There was a pause as a supersized lawn mower with a workman in the seat passed beneath the open window of my office. The smell of cut grass drifted in. While we waited I thought, Well, there they are together, the twin symbols of our middleclass culture: noise and lawns, they're eating up what little is left of the natural world.

  Our conversation began to taper off. I looked at my watch. Raff, however, was reluctant to go.

  "It isn't just snakes," he said. "There are a huge number of kinds of frogs and salamanders at Nokobee. I thought I might check to see if there are any special kinds that live in pitcher-plant bogs. We have some at Nokobee, but I just never got around to checking them out."

  "Well, yes, that would be interesting, all right. If you get the chance why don't you look down into the water inside the pitchers and see if you can find any tadpoles living there? There might be some tree frogs breeding there. That would be a terrific thing if you found it."

  A young woman student, smiling brightly and loaded with an armful of books, had arrived at the door for my next appointment. Twenty pounds overweight, eyeglasses, wearing artificially weathered jeans and a loose T-shirt, no bra--in short, a coed of liberated America. I stood up to let her in. Raff also stood up, but continued talking as we walked across the office.

  "Another thing I want to see is the torreyas at the Apalachicola Bluffs. That's the only place they grow in the wild, and I understand they're dying off."

  "Yes, yes," I said, feeling a bit impatient. "It's because of a fungus. Same sort of thing that wiped out the American chestnut."

  Torreyas--or "stinking cedars," from the odor of their wood--are conifers left behind in the Deep South when the continental glaciers retreated ten thousand years ago. Most, but not all, cold-tolerant plants retreated with them. The torreyas decided to stay behind.

  "There are a few they've got growing in a nursery outside Clayville." Raff was still talking as I admitted and shook hands with the new student. "They make nice ornamental trees, and the cultivated ones don't have the fungus."

  "Sure," I said. "Okay, okay. We take field trips out of here to the Apalachicola Bluffs from time to time. Why don't you come with me and some of the other students on the next one? I'll see you around."

  Finally, Raff relinquished and walked away. This kid, I thought, has come to the right place.

  17

  BECAUSE HE'D COME to Florida State University, I was Raphael Semmes Cody's ready-made first college mentor. He acquired his second mentor when he audited the beginning undergraduate course in entomology. William Abbott Needham was a world authority on beetles. That was no mean accomplishment, because four hundred thousand kinds are known to science, and possibly twice that number remain undiscovered. He was also the leading authority on the boll weevil, ravager of the South's cotton fields in the early 1900s. Because of his passion for the subject and scholarly reputation, he was surrounded by a cadre of dedicated graduate students. He was addressed as Professor Needham to his face, and Uncle Bill behind his back. He didn't mind the latter at all.

  Bill Needham, in his late forties at the time, had the lean hawklike looks one expects to find in a veteran field biologist but almost never actually does. He spoke in a low, carefully modulated voice, and enjoyed pronouncing scientific names in the exact original Greek or Latin. His imperturbably calm, measured manner hid a passion within.

  When outdoors, Needham always wore a porkpie hat made to his specifications. The top was a mesh that allowed air in to cool his head. Under the brim was a neatly folded mosquito net that could be dropped at the pull of a string to protect his face and neck from the bloodsuckers. Needham was, he explained, allergic to mosquito bites. He carried a bright orange book bag that held, in addition to notes and manuscript pages, bottles for insect specimens, and a tightly folded butterfly net, another of his inventions. The net could be taken out in an instant and opened like an umbrella. Anywhere Needham spotted a flying insect that interested him, even in a crowd of people, he pulled out the "Needham net" to ensnare the specimen for close inspection.

  Needham was a genuine eccentric, by which I mean his peculiarities were not affectations but simply a way of enjoying the world as he saw it. Every place, including the busiest parts of downtown Tallahassee and the campus of Florida State University, was to him a habitat teeming with insects. He knew the names and habits of most of what he saw and he was alert to any newcomer that crossed his path. He was often assisted by his third wife, a former graduate student who--by necessity, and at last, after the first two had departed--shared his entomological obsession.

  This genial scientist and Southern gentleman was adored by the students closest to him. Most college teachers merely take pride in their subject and are eager to convey it, then go home for dinner and unrelated diversions. Needham was consumed by his work. His acolytes could not help but be drawn into the world he occupied around the clock. They learned to see human artifacts as but a matrix within which insects lived in countless numbers, pursuing their missions in mysterious ways. Few students ever entered his world completely, and then only for a few semesters. But for the rest of their lives all would retain at least a basic knowledge of entomology and remember the spirit of the scholar who had taught it. He was an ornament to his profession, a Gold Medalist of the Entomological Society of America and named the 1994 Teacher of the Year by the Association of Southeastern Universities.

  Each Wednesday at four in the afternoon Needham opened up his office to all in order to preside over a freewheeling seminar popularly known as the Bug Bash. He served hot tea poured into Styrofoam cups along with supermarket cookies shaken out of cardboard containers. The conversation typically began with some current event in the news or major report in the latest weekly issue of Nature or Science. Then it skipped about erratically, not avoiding more sensational topics of university and national politics. Invariably and soon, however, it drifted back to the vast and arcane world of entomology. Needham always started and often led the conversation, but he preferred to listen. He liked to say it was an important part of his own education.

  He would prod the Bashers in his response, not always politely. "You got a reference for that?" Or, "That sounds like some kind of an answer to me. So what's the question?" Or, "I've got a dryinid wasp here. Anybody ever seen a dryinid? I bet you all will think it's some kind of an ant when you see it." Then he would shake the dryinid out of a glass tube onto the table in front of him, and all would watch as the little wasp scurried across the surface and jumped off the edge.

  He was also kindly. He liked to draw timid students out. "Hey, George, didn't you get one of those blind cave beetles last summer up in Cave Springs? I think it's a species of Pseudanophthalmus. It was amazing to see one alive. You still got any in your terrarium, and can we look at it?"

  As a student in the Honors Program, Raff was allowed to take entomology while only a second-semester freshman. He also insinuated himself into the Wednesday afternoon Bug Bashers, simply by showing up and sitting on a chair at the edge of the group. Soon he was asking questions, and he was able to offer a few frissons of entomology from his life at Nokobee. He had a stock of bug war stories to tell: an outbreak of giant rhinoceros beetles, winged dogfights among cardinal butterflies, the arrival of a honeybee swarm at an abandoned woodpecker nest.

  Raff had enough such anecdotes to hold his own with the older students. But his ace was an account of the anthills of Dead Owl Cove. He'd mapped all the nests he could find, as part of the requirements for the Boy Scout merit badge in insect life. He had taken notes as well on the denizens of two of the anthills. He'd also recorded prey that their foraging workers brought home. Finally, he'd had the good luck to witness a late summer wedding flight in which winged queens and males flew up from the scattered anthills simultaneously and mated in midair.

  Needham was especially drawn to the ants, as I had been.

  "I'm
pretty sure I've seen that species in other parts of the longleaf savanna," he said. "It might be a new species. Hills like that are pretty rare in this part of the country, but as I recall it, where you do find them they're densely crowded. My guess is that each hill is a nest for a separate colony, but I'm not sure about that at all."

  Raff responded eagerly. "I think they're separate. I've seen workers from different nests fighting a couple of times."

  "Hey. Why don't we go over to Nokobee some Saturday soon and take a look?" Needham said. "We could get a few of the guys together and make an expedition of it."

  Two Saturdays later the expedition to Nokobee was launched. Raff was home that weekend. He'd given Needham instructions and a hand-drawn map to get to the lake.

  Early that morning Ainesley drove him to the Nokobee trailhead so he could be waiting for the others when they came in from Tallahassee. As soon as Needham and six of the Bug Bash students arrived, Raff led them on a tour of the anthills around Dead Owl Cove. They then took a walk along the west shore of the lake, looking for more of the nests. Several were found, but none as densely grouped as the population at Dead Owl Cove. All of the students carried nets, and dropped ants and other kinds of insects in killing jars and vials of alcohol for later study.

  On the way out Raff lingered with Needham at the anthills, observing a bit more of whatever activity could be seen on their surfaces. Then all drove back together to Tallahassee and the Florida State University campus. Needham asked Raff to sit next to him during the return trip.

  "I've got a suggestion that you shouldn't feel obligated to take if you're not interested. I'm sure this species of ant has never been studied before. If you were to start a complete study and add that to the notes you already have, it seems to me it might make a very good honors thesis. You could do it pretty conveniently because you live so close."