The Taste of Victory: A True Story

Neal was an ant full of hatred:  hatred of the cast on his leg that made it difficult to march, as he was compelled to do by that catchy song from Dave Matthews Band…

… whom he also hated…

… hatred of watermelons…

… and kids with magnifying glasses…

… but most of all, hatred for the one who used a chemical warfare agent to wipe out the rest of his colony at  Reflections:  the despicable human known as “Briggs.”

Briggs didn’t realize, however, that he’d made a grave mistake in allowing Neal to live.  He had instructed Neal to return to The Nest and warn others against returning to what was left of the colony…

… but all Briggs succeeded in doing was planting seeds of revenge in Neal’s heart.  Neal had no intention of going down without a fight, and by returning to The Nest, he knew he would have the opportunity to recruit thousands of other ants to help him carry out any plan he could dream up…

As expected, telling others the tale of what happened at the colony that fateful day roused widespread outrage.

Neal was able to pick and choose the best, stealthiest, most well-trained ants and enlist them in his elite fighting force for what could only be described as a suicide mission.

Neal and his army waited months, until they were sure Briggs had let his guard down, before they decided to strike.

He used all of his background knowledge on Briggs to strategize the most effective attack.  The target: his supply of rations.

Neal and his force used ninja-like stealth to infiltrate the warehouse where Briggs stored his food and slipped through walls of cellophane undetected.

There, camouflaged both in color and in texture by the dark, shriveled skins, Neal and his compatriots waited among clumps of raisins for their moment.

It came on a lazy day.  Briggs was hungry, and as Neal anticipated, Briggs turned to his favorite Sunmaid snack.  He didn’t suspect a thing as he tore the wrapper off the box and opened it.

A look of mild confusion crossed over Briggs’s face.  “Huh… I could swear I smell ants,” Briggs mumbled to himself.  He examined the cellophane which he had just ripped open, but didn’t see any signs of tampering because Neal and his army were so ninja.

Briggs shrugged and popped a couple raisins in his mouth, not knowing that several kamikaze ants had hopped on, greeting their impending doom with gusto and gleeful determination.

The smell, and more noticeably, the TASTE of ants filled Briggs’s nose and mouth.  Neal and the others cheered jubilantly as Briggs dropped the box of “raisants” to go find somewhere to retch.

They continued to celebrate joyfully, knowing that their success may be short-lived if Briggs returned with his chemical agent to fumigate them, but in their hearts that day, they rejoiced in triumph, knowing that Briggs had tasted their victory and would not soon forget it.