Ants Over Child

She waited until her 3-month-old child Harold partly emptied his bottle. Then Mrs. Watson Patrick tucked him in his crib under the tree at the edge of the tomato patch, wiped dribble from his lips, and left him for an hour to help her husband cultivate the vines. Unobserved by the Patricks, shack-living tenant farmers of Bells, Tenn., when they placed the child's crib on the ground, was a red ant hill. Nor did Mother Patrick notice that her son's milk bottle was leaking on the coverlet, dripping to the ground.

Foraging ants found the milk drippings, scurried back to the ant hill with the tidings. When Mrs. Patrick returned from the tomato patch, the crib, the coverlet, Harold's head were a rusty-red quiver. The baby was unconscious. Doctors thought that he might recover from the ant-bite poison (formic acid). But the red ants, like the all-devouring soldier ants which terrorize tropical Asia, had nipped the sight from one eye.

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