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The Ants of Antarctica

 By Calvin and Steve

There once lived a colony of ants at the South Pole.  They were a rare species of ant that thrived on ice and cold and lived in deep caverns around the South Pole.  These ants had the unique ability to turn ice into a substance meat-like product.  They had lived at the South Pole for thousands of years.   

The ants lived there with a troupe of ring-tailed lemurs.  You may wonder how lemurs came to live with the bacon-producing ants in Antarctica.  Well, here is how it came to be:

About 100 year ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton was preparing his expedition to the South Pole.  He and his crew were loading supplies (warm clothes, dried, salted meat, bread and fresh vegetables like lettuce and onions) on his ship in England when he announced that they were to make a stop at a most unlikely of places- Madagascar. 

When Shackleton and his crew arrived at Madagascar, they found many lemurs.  Shackleton struck up a conversation with the leader of the ring-tailed lemurs, who happened to be named: Shaq.  Shaq was intrigued by the expedition and asked if he and his troupe could come along.  Shackleton agreed but had two conditions:

1. the lemurs must provide their own transportation when they reach the ice; and
2. They must supply their own food.

Shaq, said no problem, “we’ve got a mad gas car and plenty of tomatoes”.  So they loaded a couple of crates of tomatoes onto the ship along with the mad gas car and shoved off for the South Pole. 

Weeks later, the ship approached the icy waters of Antarctica.  Shackleton, the crew and the lemurs (by then, the lemurs had learned a great deal about sailing and were extremely useful with the sails), prepared for rough sailing.  Eventually the ice became so thick that they were stuck!

Well, Shaq and the lemurs struck out on their own in their mad gas car and took their tomatoes.  Shackleton’s crew lived on the stranded ship for several weeks before the shifting ice flows began to crush it.  They too had to strike out onto the ice to uncertain fortunes. After wandering aimlessly for about a week, one of Shackleton’s crew swore he smelled bacon cooking.  Of course the rest of the crew thought he was going bonkers, which would have been understandable given their circumstances.  But soon enough, others smelled it too and they followed it like hungry dogs.           

Soon, they discovered the entrance to a cavern.  They trudged inside and could not believe their eyes.  Shaq and the lemur troupe were holding palaver with a huge colony of ants and cooking bacon over a roaring fire!  As you can imagine, Shackleton’s crew did more than a double take at this sight. 

Once the crew realized that this was indeed happening before their eyes, they ran toward the cooked bacon with abandon.  In the process, though, some of Shackleton’s crew tripped over one of the lemurs, breaking his femur and sending the contents of their backpacks sailing.  When the mess of crew, ants and lemurs cleared, what do you think had miraculously appeared?

What sat before them was a construction of the most unlikely kind.  It had at its base, a slice of bread along with some lettuce from the crew’s pack, and atop it, several slices of bacon and resting on it, a slice of the lemur’s tomato.  And this was topped off with yet another hunk of Shackleton’s bread. 

So, as you must have surmised by now, the story of the ants of Antarctica is also the story of how the BLT sandwich was invented. 

So, you might ask questions like:

·         How did the ants get there in the first place?

·         How was it that they learned how to make bacon from ice?

·         Did Shackleton’s crew make it off Antarctica?