Most houses in our part of Mexico have resident gecko lizards. They come out at night to hunt insects and sometimes make distinctive, loud chirps, I guess to each other.
One morning I found a dead gecko in the kitchen. It was young, about as long as your pinky finger. He’d gotten caught by the refrigerator door gasket, squished but not deformed. I placed him on the edge of a raised garden bed in the backyard thinking a bird might eat him.
Later that day to my surprise, I saw the gecko moving up a wall about ten feet away from where I’d set him down. As got closer I could see the gecko was still dead but was be dragged up the wall by a band of around 40 small ants.
It was slow but noticeable progress up the wall. Until it wasn’t… three feet upward then a progress would halt for some unseen reason and the gecko would descend quite a bit.
It was fascinating to watch and there didn’t seem to be any logic or plan. I checked in on thievery couple of hours as it went on into the night and the gecko was slowly moved toward the top of a 12 foot wall.
Maybe ant reinforcements came in from time to time, though I didn’t count the workers, the number of ants seemed to stay constant.
I don’t know where their nest is but I’m sure the feast arrived eventually. Poco a poco, little by little.