Searching for a Short Story About an Ant

[noella]

I'm just new here and I'm hoping that someone can help me identify a short story I read when I was very young. I've searched for it but can find nothing.

I'm not sure when it was published but maybe in the '60s and I thought it might have been written by James Tiptree, Jr. but I couldn't find it in her list of stories.

It is a story about a female ant who becomes self-aware and (I believe) goes to the end of a tunnel and writes 'I AM' in the dirt wall. I think the title might be I AM.

Thanks

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

This seems somewhat similar to The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics by Ursula K. LeGuin, although it is somewhat different from what you describe.

Full text here:

The Author of the Acacia Seeds, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

[noella]

Thank you so much. I think that is, indeed, the story I was trying to remember. As I said, I was very young when I read it and, obviously, it changed in my memory. I think I confused it with the Borg character from Star Trek who learns to refer to himself as 'I'.

This story has always haunted me and I'm so glad to have finally found it again.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've moved this to the Book Search board, just in case more questions follow.