| "Leiningen Versus the Ants" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Carl Stephenson |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Short story |
| Published in | Esquire |
| Publication type | Magazine |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | December 1938 |
"Leiningen Versus the Ants" by Carl Stephenson is a classic short story published in the December 1938 edition of Esquire.
The story centers on a scrappy, no-nonsense plantation owner called Leiningen (his first name is never mentioned in the story), and his stubborn refusal to abandon his plantation in the face of a seemingly unstoppable mass of army ants, described as "an elemental—an act of God!"
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The district commissioner (who narrates the radio adaptation in the first person) describes the threat Leiningen faces: "Ten miles long, two miles wide—ants, nothing but ants!” Additionally, each ant is approximately the size of a man's thumb and wants to consume any form of life that falls in its path. It is also mentioned that they can completely pick the flesh from a horse in six minutes.
The action is set "in the Brazilian rainforest", where Leiningen (who is referred to ambiguously as one of several "settlers" in the area) owns a large plantation. It is never specified what crops the plantation grows, but Leiningen employs more than four hundred laborers and has brought the plantation to high success through his planning, intelligence, knowledge, and reasoned approach to problem solving. The story, as well as the character of Leiningen, stress on several occasions the crucial role that human intelligence and ingenuity play in problem solving.
Unlike his fellow settlers, Leiningen is not about to give up years of hard work and planning to "an act of God." He assembles his workers, who are all or mostly indigenous peoples, and informs them of the inbound horror. Though the natives are a naturally superstitious and frightened lot, their respect for and trust in Leiningen enables them to remain calm and determined: "The ants were indeed mighty, but not so mighty as the boss." Later in the story, despite suffering setbacks and being given an offer of dismissal with full pay, most of the laborers choose to stay with Leiningen.
Much of the rest of the story is taken up with the days-long struggle in which Leiningen attempts to hold off the huge swath of ants. He uses an ingenious system of levees, moats and "decoy" fields to keep the ants at bay. For example, he draws off some of the ants to a valueless fallow field, while keeping a large portion of the others off of the central compound with a system of defensive canals. The ants are initially unable to cross over, but soon manage to build bridges on the bodies of ants who mindlessly sacrifice themselves to the waters.
As the bridges of ant corpses begin to reach the near side of the canals, Leiningen opens a series of sluice gates, greatly increasing the flow of water, and washing away the prior ant bridges. He also employs gasoline and other petroleum flammables to great effect: the chemicals not only burn the ants when ignited, but also interfere with their chemically-based tracking and sensory organs.
After days of hard fighting, the ants force Leiningen and his remaining workers back to the last line of defense, the plantation house on top of a hill. Leiningen has managed to make a rather large dent in the ant population, but there are still more than enough ants to annihilate Leiningen and what is left of his plantation. Finally, the ants manage to breach Leiningen's last defenses, and all seems lost. However, Leiningen realizes that his original principle of canals and damming could be put to use on a large scale to finally repel the remaining ants: if he dammed the main river itself (a possibility due to large constructs that had already been put in place at the story's outset), the whole plantation would flood, drowning all the ants. He and his men could take refuge in the heights of the manor house, which was on a hill. However, this plan would require reaching the dam itself, which had long been overrun by the ants.
Resolving that he would not go down without knowing that he did all he possibly could, Leiningen puts on a makeshift protective suit, douses himself with gasoline, picks up two spray cans of the same, and makes a run for the dam — through the ants. The climax of the story occurs when he is knocked down by the ants and almost eaten. Thinking about the white bones of a stag and resolving that he cannot die that way, he forces himself to get up and continue running. Despite suffering horrible injuries, including ant bites to the inside of his nose and directly below his eyes, Leiningen reaches the dam controls and floods the plantation. This meant the death of his entire year's crop, but it also saved the lives of his men, preserved the contents of his great granaries, and destroyed the menace of the ants for everyone else. Luckily, Leiningen survives. At the story's end, Leiningen awakes after recovering from his injuries, his first words: "I told you I would come back, even if I am a bit streamlined."
In 1948, the story was adapted into a radio play as part of the CBS Radio series, Escape. William Conrad provided the voice of Leiningen for the January 14th debut broadcast. It was further adapted in 1954 by Ranald MacDougall and Ben Maddow into the film The Naked Jungle, starring Charlton Heston as Leiningen and featuring William Conrad as the commissioner. In 1959, the story was again adapted into a radio play as part of the CBS Radio series, Suspense. Luis Van Rooten provided the voice of Leiningen for the November 29th episode.
The story also inspired "Trumbuo's World", the sixth episode of the television series MacGyver. Stock footage from The Naked Jungle was used in the episode.
It was also parodied on the cartoon series Camp Candy. In "Candy and the Ants", [[John Candy]l] is faced with a swarm olf voracious "navy ants", which he finally repels by importing anteanters. ("What kind of barbarians are we dealing with?" screams the ant admiral.)
The humor magazine National Lampoon also parodied the story in a short story called "Leiningen and the Snails", in which the title character faces a swarm of "army snails", and has "merely three weeks" to think of a way to defend the plantation. He eventually brings in by air enough garlic and butter to cook all the snails into escargo.
Leiningen is a build tool for Clojure, a programming language for the Java Virtual Machine. Another popular build tool for the JVM is called Ant. Leiningen uses the Ant build tool inside.