WEST UNION, Ohio - In the midst of the grass and the trees and the gentle breeze, smack dab in the middle of nature's calm, three men and a woman are crouched on the ground, watching a horror film unfold on John Howard's monitor.

WEST UNION, Ohio � In the midst of the grass and the trees and the gentle breeze, smack dab in the middle of nature�s calm, three men and a woman are crouched on the ground, watching a horror film unfold on John Howard�s monitor.

Ants crawl over Howard�s body, down his arms and across his green T-shirt, but he doesn�t seem to notice. Like the others, he�s transfixed. He guides a scope into a tightly packed pile of dirt and the screen shows a frenzy of angry insects.

One Allegheny mound ant shoots acid at the camera; the picture goes cloudy.

�This is the stuff of monster movies, isn�t it?� Howard says.

Howard, 54, lives in Adams County and spends his days inspecting aircraft engines for General Electric. A few weeks ago, he got the idea to point a borescope in a different direction. The longtime natural-history enthusiast borrowed one from a vendor and began looking closer at tiger beetles, gray wolf spiders and crayfish.

Then he decided to stick it where no insect nerd apparently has stuck it before.

He headed to Adams Lake State Park with a pack of folks who don�t let a speck of nature pass by without stopping to question what it is, why it�s there or how it fits into the rest of the world. There was no record of anyone else trying a borescope on an ant mound before, so they weren�t going to miss it.

The group included Gary Coovert, a Laurelville resident who wrote The Ants of Ohio, and his wife and illustrator, Holly; Mark Zloba, an ecological manager with the Cincinnati Museum Center; and naturalist Jim McCormac, who works for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and writes a regular column for The Dispatch.

None of them had seen the inside of an ant mound, not like this. Mr. Coovert had picked up ants from each of the state�s 88 counties, amassing a collection of thousands, but he�d always had to dig into the mounds, disturbing years of tiny ant work. Howard�s goal was to cause little damage, to see the ants in their intricate, miniature natural habitat. Adams Lake Prairie is rich with Allegheny mounds, some of them decades old and packed with hundreds of thousands of ants. Up close, these conical piles of dirt are constantly squirming and morphing, crawling with tiny workers who never take a vacation. The mounds help the ants regulate temperatures for their eggs, and they are large and distinct: Mr. Coovert likes to call this species the 60 mph ant, the only one you can spot while driving down the highway.

�We really don�t know a lot about their hidden lives,� he said. �I had no idea what their tunnels were shaped like or how they were intertwined.�

At Adams Lake, the group had its pick of mounds. Howard chose one just off the walking path and unpacked his equipment. He set up his monitor on a table so the others could watch. Then he pulled out the scope and did to the ant mound what a doctor does during a colonoscopy. He eased his camera inside and guided it through the labyrinthine tunnels of the Allegheny Mound Ant home.

A light at the end illuminated intertwining tunnels and a few ants � barely bigger than grains of rice � that looked monstrous enough to crush buildings. They swarmed the scope. One blasted a stream of formic acid, which the ants use to kill vegetation on the mound. The screen filled with ants.

�My guess is, that triggered an alarm,� Howard said. �That means we�ve worn our welcome out there.�

Howard tried again, poking a thin steel tube into the mound, then threading the scope through the hole. He plumbed the mound more, looking not only for the ants but for the kinds of creatures that might never see the light. The group was particularly interested in a few sightings of springtails, tiny arthropods that looked like fleas compared to the ants.

Mr. Coovert was amazed. Mrs. Coovert was studying a tree. Howard decided to move on to another mound, but was quickly distracted by mysterious holes made by bees that had burrowed into the ground.

McCormac surveyed the odd tableau, a bunch of nature lovers and their monitor in the forest, with a smile on his face. He offered an observation, a compliment.

�This,� he said, �transcends nerdism.�

lkurtzman@dispatch.com

@LoriKurtzman