The Trembling Aspen, or Poplar, known as the softest of the hardwoods to lumbermen, is a deceptive description, for once seasoned, it is difficult to drive a nail into its tough, dense, wood, while a chain-saw, if not watched carefully, quickly chokes upon the cotton-wool that constitutes its sawdust.

    One Autumn I made a store of firewood, all cut from some old, well-seasoned poplar logs that had been drying for several years in a farmer's bush-lot. Upon splitting them, and they were easily split, I discovered here and there, small nests of carpenter ants hidden in the trunk, their little chambers secreted about an inch below the bark and their entrances stopped with chewed-up wood against the coming winter.

    It was November and they were already comatose, though they moved sluggishly when my axe sent them spilling on the frozen ground. Unfortunately, I had to kill them for it would have been stupid to do otherwise as I was well aware of their carpentering proclivity. If by some miracle they had lived through the cold and gained entry to my home, no piece of wood used in its construction would have been safe from their depredations.

    One night, I was sitting, book in hand at the back of the living room, enjoying the glow and crackle of a fire, when I compulsively got out of my chair and strode to the hearth. Smoke curled up the chimney from behind a log while flames licked its front. I glimpsed a movement upon its surface and, peering through the smoke, saw a small phalanx of carpenter ants, grayish and black, drawn up in tight order and facing the flames. I thought they were aware of my presence as they seemed to sway in unison when I saw them.

    Conscious though I was of their little lives, I knew they were in a hopeless predicament and brusquely swept them into the fire knowing it was the merciful thing to do. But I was immediately left with a bothersome feeling that there had been a brief but palpable moment of awareness, they of me and I of them.

    It is said that what makes man different from other living things is that he is the only one capable of knowing he will die some day. Sceptic that I am, was it some sort of sub-conscious expectancy on my part that this knowledge might also be instilled in other forms of life? Was that why I got out of my chair to cross the room and look into the smoke and flames?

    In retrospect I have wondered if they had souls, that they aspired to a collective fear, an innate knowledge of doom, that they sent out a signal, all on the same wavelength, tiny, electrical, that was recognised by my brain. A call for help? God, I hope not.