FOOD 111 



DOROTHY. Ours didn't care for the milk I gave them, 

 but they liked the sardines. 



CECIL. You better quit feeding them so much or they 

 will become as helpless as dogs, cats, horses, cows, sheep 

 and chickens. They'll starve when you quit. 



KENNETH. I have wet a piece of paper and a piece of 

 tobacco leaf and have laid each at the door of our ants, 

 as you see. Look! The ants like the tobacco water the 

 better. 



FLORENCE. Well, you'll be punished if I tell. Now 

 they'll die. 



KENNETH. They don't act like it, but maybe they 

 wish they could. I've done this several times before, and 

 they've always preferred the tobacco water but once. 



FLORENCE. Did anybody but you ever find out that 

 ants like tobacco? 



KENNETH. Yes. After I discovered it, I read of a 

 farmer near Austin, Texas, that had to hide his chewing 

 tobacco to keep the ants from stealing it. And near the 

 same place they stole a farmer's wheat, too. Did you ever 

 read the story, "Then another little ant went in and 

 carried out another grain of wheat"? 



ALBERT. Ants like fats and oils. They squeeze the oil 

 out of seed. They get fats out of game, also. Some are 

 great hunters for live game, like some men, but more of 

 them just gather up the dead. 



CECIL. Ants are wise. Sometimes they fatten their 

 stolen babies before eating them. Mushroom raisers enrich 

 their gardens with liquid fertilizer and with more chewed- 

 up leaves. Ants harden their walls with formic acid. 

 Some kinds cover their mounds with gravel roofs. This 

 doesn't wash off, either. These little Garden ants often 

 cover the inner slope of their craters with small pebbles. 



