Before you humans started bragging about bendy thumbs, we ants had a very sophisticated  culture. Our art was stepped on by every known species and carried on their soles to the far corners of the Earth. But millions of years of ant art produced only one true towering marvel of literary excellence: Woodle.

You humans say you’re the most advanced of all terrestrial species. Only you have produced a Shakespeare. Bah. Your bard was a helpless bald baby. In the first hour of his life, Woodle composed thousands of plays. In the last, only four-hundred. Let’s take a moment of silence and read his posthumous magnum opus.

Hey, what’s that?
SPLAT.

You decry us ants as an army of picnic pirates. Your bard’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe died in a bar fight. Your psalmist David was an adulterer and a racketeer. Woodle, in contrast, was sober, most of the time.

“To be or not to be” is the peak of your bard’s human ontology. Woodle’s has ten options, only four of which are “to pick up” and “to not pick up.” It sounds much better in the original.

You humans have a couple thousand languages. Woodle spoke them all. He composed three operettas in German. Quite a feisty language, innit?

You have two world wars and write some “stirring” human poetry. In his two week life, Woodle wrote through six world wars. The carnage of the fifth led to the burning of two-hundred of his novels, tormenting scholars to this day.

Human royal patronage has been supplanted by “crowd-funding” and “trust funds.” We ants have no need to spurn our matriarchy. As Woodle said:

If it isn’t broke,
we can’t lift it.

Woodle’s patron—Queen Maxima Culona MMMMMMMMMMMMMIV—was also his mistress. And his mother. You humans have a whole television network dedicated to this type of relationship: HBO.

But enough literary criticism. Let us hear Woodle’s wondrous words that transcend your mere human diddling.

I am male.
I am a drone.
I can be nothing but a drone.
Click.

Marvelous, innit? It’s a very popular mandible tattoo.

Let’s sample his amorous verse.

My life is genitals
with an expiration date.
I am a fossil
that fucks.

That lyric is etched on those ant hills that you humans topple like tipsy dominoes. In some stinging stanzas, Woodle addressed your genocidal kicking.

Ahhhhh. I’m impaled on a cactus now.
Push forward, red and black brethren.
Climb into the imperialist’s underwear!

There’s one couplet that may sound strange to hairy human ears. A cult of worker ants has been tasked with interpreting this nature poem for five-hundred years.

Leaf leaf leaf leaf
leaf leaf leaf.

My exegesis is finished. You should burn all your human libraries and replace them with the nine-million volume set of The Complete Works of Woodle Besides the Ones Lost Due to A Variety of Unnatural Disasters, Of Course.

I have proven the purity, sanctity, and power of Woodle’s sublime oeuvre. I will leave you with one final poem.

I want a potato chip.
A salty crumb
has fallen
from the heavens.
Waste is reward.
Yum.

————

Dan Dellechiaie is a fiction writer from New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Defenestration, The Haven, Doctor Funny, New Hampshire Magazine, Little Old Lady Comedy, Another Fucking Publication, Robot Butt, The Chamber Magazine, The Scare You to Sleep Podcast, The Cambridge Chronicle, and Tongue. His work can be found at dadell.com.