Ambush!!

by Erick Miller

One day just like a lot of others in Vietnam, I was on observation post, which is like listening post only the sun is up. Neither job is very desirable in the infantry. The deal is one or two men go out from the main element about 100 meters to keep their mouths shut and their eyes and ears open. This way the bogeymen can’t sneak up on your perimeter and wipe everyone out. They only get to wipe the O.P. or the L.P. The noise of this warns the main element and they are on full alert, which is preferable because you live longer that way. Back to the O.P., which consist of my friend Travis, and myself. We are standing about ten meters apart to increase the coverage of our built in radar and to avoid distracting each other because we want to live too.

Well, Travis decides to distract me anyway. He motions me over to point out an extremely dangerous spider. This is no run of the mill spider. This bug looks like a black pit bull with a close shave. Definitely “Special Forces” in the bug world. “Airborne All The Way”. As bad as this guy looks you’d think he would be safe, but before I can go back to my post a single ant came out and bit this pit bull on his rear end. This was no ordinary ant. It was one of those long skinny black ones. If you know your ants you’d know that these are kings of the ant world. King or no king he is no match for our hero the spider. Naturally the spider practically somersaults to tend to this pain in the rear.

The ant knows what we know and he has a small Army waiting in the wings to assist in what only looked like a suicide assault. In about the last three heartbeats of the spider he was overwhelmed, dismembered, and carried away.

Travis and I each gripped our rifles a little tighter and went back to our duty in silent awe.