death and destruction

new life and recycling

I've left this old tree trunk in the garden for ages to see what would eat it in the end. Well, this very pretty fungus is neatly breaking the whole thing apart. That's the death and destruction bit. But life isn't as simple as that - in the middle, a colony of ants has set up home. The holes belong to them. They have chewed it up so much that some of the wood is not much more than ash. And they are busy carrying eggs around and doing anty things.

But there's not only that - because the wild birds and our house chickens go and pick the ants out. The wild birds do their wild bird thing and the chickens enjoy the high protein diet (that didn't get shipped as grain from argentina - admittedly, they might not enjoy that factor but, I do) and lay eggs (unfertilised, we don't steal chicken babies) for us to eat.

And so - who eats the old log? I think it might, right at the end of the food chain, be me. Until I offer myself up to the ants and fungus.....