To my friends in Oak Ridge Tennessee who tell me things I need to know to write my books especially Donna and Dave Reichle Mimi and Murray Rosenthal Sheila and Mike Saltmarsh Nancy and Bob Van Hook B A P To Barbara Ann and to Anne B for their care in detecting the future in the past and the past in the future A C
ages ago in China a little girl named Ma Jiang lived with her mother and her father and her three brothers Two of the brothers were nearly grown but the third one Bao was still a baby Selling orange ants was how the Ma family earned their living Though it didn't make them rich they had everything they needed to get by food clothes shelter and medicine to put on ant bites
Orange ants are very fierce They eat almost every crawling thing in sight and whatever gets in their way they bite They especially like to dine on insects that eat oranges which is how they got their name Orange growers in China buy orange ants and put them in their orange groves to protect the fruit from harm Long ago some of the ants bought by orange growers had been caught by the Ma family Night after night Jiang's father and her brothers climbed high into tall trees and into wild bamboo where orange ants live and cut down their nests while the ants were asleep Then wrapping the nests securely in woven rush mat bags they carried them back to Jiang's mother
