Our Olympic Adventure, Part IV: Small Wonders
Here's the most spectacular thing I saw in the Olympic National Park last week: "What?" you say, "One of those ubiquitous logs that have been cut away from blocking the trail, and the sawdust left by the chainsaw? You call that spectacular?" Look more closely (and I apologize for the blurriness of this, but it's on full zoom, and the light's not very good under the canopy): The blob in the middle of this picture is a carpenter ant with a tiny load of sawdust in its mandibles. Here's what makes this spectacular: The intricate pattern in the log was made by these ants. That means the heap of sawdust, which is at least two feet deep, was made by these ants, too. The color of the log's face shows that it's not a recent cut; it was probably made at least a year or two ago. We stopped to take a closer look because the design was so interesting that we thought it might be of human origin, and we wondered what it meant. Then we r...