James Stuart: The fire ants variation

Invariably described as an ecological disaster,
fire ants are the evolved antithesis of market
garden poets. Recently, a lyrebird’s corpse
was found littered with crimson pustules
in bushland adjoining a continental herb patch.
The ants infiltrated this land obscured in cargo
containers, cleared by Quarantine, some of whose
scribes have since been uncovered as acolytes.

They spread out, heedless too of bush poets’ pleas.
Now swarming in countless colonies of numbers
of up to half a million, with a retractile stinger
that can deliver anaphylactic shock to the
domestic gardener, they fear none. The literati
who fled in time are still laughing their heads off.