Children's Song

A red ant
Found a drop of honey.
He was very happy.
He told all the other red ants.
They all drank the honey.

nside a withered tree there lived two colonies of ants, the red ants and the blue ants. The red ants lived in the east and the blue ants in the west. Each realm had only one exit to the outside world.

The red ants moved slowly, but were very well organized. No matter what they did, whether searching for food or moving things, they always queued up and performed their tasks in perfect order. The blue ants moved five times faster than the red ants, but with no order at all--they always ran around the dead tree in great confusion.

If a red ant and a blue ant discovered some food at the same time, the blue one always snatched the food first and would make fun of the red ant's slowness. Naturally, the red ants found less food than the blue ants did. However, the blue ants always romped around and never united to complete any task together, so they often lost the food they had found.

One day, the queen of the blue ants met the queen of the red ants and said proudly, "Look at how rich my domain is! My subjects all move fast and find food easily, unlike your stupid, sluggish ones!"

The queen of the red ants said, "Even though we move more slowly, we always work together. Since my subjects can always bring some food home, we are quite happy as well."

One day the old tree caught fire, and all the ants from both realms were trying to escape.

In spite of their slowness, the red queen led her ants out in orderly fashion from their exit and they all escaped from the fire.

On the other side of the burning tree, the blue queen and her subjects all stampeded to the exit at the same time. Though they moved quickly, they jammed together at their only exit and were all burned to death. The blue ants were never seen again.