Another objectionable habit of the tropical ants, viewed practically,
is their total disregard of vested interests in the case of house
property. Like Mr. George and his communistic friends, they disbelieve
entirely in the principle of private rights in real estate. They will
eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a
slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have
taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches
thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in
diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell. With the material
extracted from the wooden beams they proceed to add insult to injury by
building long covered galleries right across the ceiling of your
drawing-room. As may be easily imagined, these galleries do not tend to
improve the appearance of the ceiling; and it becomes necessary to form
a Liberty and Property Defence League for the protection of one's
personal interests against the insect enemy. I have no objection to ants
building galleries on their own freehold, or even to their nationalising
the land in their native forests; but I do object strongly to their
unwarrantable intrusion upon the domain of private life. Expostulation
and active warfare, however, are equally useless. The carpenter-ant has
no moral sense, and is not amenable either to kindness or blows. On one
occasion, when a body of these intrusive creatures had constructed an
absurdly conspicuous brown gallery straight across the ceiling of my
drawing-room, I determined to declare open war against them, and,
getting my black servant to bring in the steps and a mop, I proceeded to
demolish the entire gallery just after breakfast.
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