Leiningen Versus the Ants

The pampas stag is a symbol of mortality and a reminder that grandiosity, both physical and imagined, cannot protect Leiningen from forces of nature beyond his control. Leiningen watches the ants devour the stag within six minutes, leaving behind only its skeleton. The ants consume the animal as Leiningen himself might have hunted and consumed it. This alerts the planter to the fact that, despite his sense of supremacy, he, too, is only mortal flesh. The ants can eliminate his existence as easily as they did that of the stag. In a moment of panic, when he’s nearly consumed by the ants as the stag was, Leiningen hallucinates and revisits the memory of the dying animal, envisioning his fate. The image stirs his will to survive and to triumph over the ants that seek to destroy him. 

Leiningen casually references the saurians when telling the District Commissioner that nothing, not even this imaginary herd, could send him away from his plantation. Saurians are a suborder of lizards and birds that exist up to present-day. Leiningen is likely thinking of the modern-day saurian’s now extinct dinosaur ancestors that would be more fearsome than the lizards who also run away from the horde of ants.