Nature Watching Quotes

“She spots a large army of green ants building a nest between two thin twig branches of a flimsy tree with floppy green leaves. "Look at this, Yukio," Molly whispers, leaning into the tree where a line of ants with amber bodies and glowing jay-coloured abdomens are carrying a white grub along a designated worker road on a branch. "They make their homes out of leaves. Some of the ants are the tough ones who will work together to haul the leaves up, and some of the ants are the clever ones who will weave the leaves together, and some of them are gluers who use that white stuff they're carrying to stick all the leaves in place.

Yukio releases a brief sigh of awe. "Hmm."

"See the bridge?" Molly asks. The ants had built a bridge out of their own connected bodies to create a shortcut for the gluers wanting to access a branch below them. "I wish that fella Adolf Hitler could see this," Molly whispers.

"Hitler?" Yukio echoes confused.

"Yeah," Molly says. "We could get Hitler and what's-his-name—Musolino—"

"Mussolini," Yukio says.

"Yeah! Mussolini," Molly says. "We get Hitler, Mussolini, and Winston Churchill all together and they could come and look at this ant bridge for a while. Calm themselves down a bit. Just watching some green ants working for an hour or two.”
― Trent Dalton, All Our Shimmering Skies