Claws But No Paws Poem by Cowboy Ron Williams

Ant lions are sometimes called doodlebugs, although I didn't know that until I googled it a few minutes ago. We never called them that. I used to see ant lions all the time when I was just a kid. The first time I ever saw one, I didn't know what it was, and I was amazed. I was walking home from school one day and saw a cone-shaped depression in the sand. As I bent down to get a closer look, I saw an ant slip down the side. It started to try to climb back out, and suddenly, from the bottom of the hole, something started flipping sand on it, and it slid to the bottom and some creature grabbed it! I went and got a tin can and scooped out the sand at the bottom, and got my first look at an ant lion! The following paragraphs are from an article I found on the internet. It is by Theresa Duncan and is called ‘Doodlebug Death Traps: a Closer Look at the Infamous Ant Lion'. Found worldwide in arid and sandy habitats, ant lions belong to the order Neuroptera. Adult ant lions lay their eggs in dry, loose soil. Once hatched, the larvae crawl about in search of a suitable home site, leaving tracks that look like doodles. The same color as the soil, they are well camouflaged.  Their broad, flattened bodies have short, stubby legs, best for their habit of crawling backwards, which is also aided by the curve of the nearly invisible hairs on their body. As they begin excavation, their oval-shaped abdomen plows through the soil, while their flat heads act like a shovel, flicking sand up and out of the pit. Continuing their backward, downward spiral, abdomen first, the cone-shaped pit is constructed. Once complete, the pit becomes the ant lion's home for up to three years. Completely buried now except for its long, piercing mandibles, or jaws, which stick out of the center of the pit, the ant lion larvae lies motionless at the bottom, waiting for its first victim. An ant or a small insect steps inside the rim of the pit and begins the fight for life. The steep sides make it hard to crawl out. The ant lion further confuses the process by flicking particles of sand or dirt onto the frantic insect, aiding its descent into the pit. At some point in the struggle, the insect falls into the bottom of the trap or is impaled by the ant lion's piercing mandibles. The predator drags its prey deeper into the sand, where it sucks out its body fluids. The ant lion then calmly takes out the trash, flicking the carcass out of its pit, and awaits its next victim. The larvae develops in stages called instars, digging many pits, some as large as two inches in diameter and depth. The ant lion, now about a half inch in size, pupates in a spherical, sand-covered cocoon for about a month in spring or summer. Upon complete metamorphosis, adult ant lions resemble damsel flies,1½ inches long, with narrow, net-veined wings they hold over their long, skinny abdomens like pup-tents when they are at rest. Adult ant lions live for one to two months.