As they marched back to the mound, laden with goodies for the Queen, the ants watched the Big Bright Ball in the sky.
    "The Big Bright Ball is full of sugar," said the first ant.
    "Honey," said the second ant. "It's full of honey."
    "Well, you're full of baloney!" snapped the first ant. "I say it's sugar, and sugar it is!"
    "Stuff and nonsense," said the third ant. "The Big Bright Ball is empty.  In fact, it's just a big bright ball, without any capitals."
    "You mustn't say that," said the fourth ant. "It doesn't really matter what the Big Bright Ball is full of, but it's important to know that it is full of something."
    "Yeah, well, you guys are full of something, all right, and I know what it is," replied the third ant.  Then he turned to the fifth ant, who had been lugging a grasshopper leg without comment. "Say, you!  You've been pretty quiet.  What's your opinion?"
    "Who, me?" asked the fifth ant.
    "Yeah," said ant number two. "What's in the Big Bright Ball?"
    "I don't know," said the fifth ant.
    "Oh, no, you don't!" chided the first ant. "You won't get off like that!  What's it going to be, full or empty?"
    The fifth ant shrugged its shoulders, such as they were.
    "What are you, ignorant or just apathetic?" badgered the second ant.
    "I don't know," said the fifth ant. "And I don't care."*
    "You have to pick one," said the fourth ant. "Don't be a wuss."
    "If you don't choose, that means you believe the ball is empty," said the first ant.
    "No," said the fifth ant, "it means I don't know.  What makes you think you know?"
    "Because the Great Queens of the past saw that the Big Bright Ball was full of sugar," said the first ant.
    "Honey," corrected the second ant.
    "Whatever," said the fourth ant.
    "See?" said the third ant. "No empirical evidence.  Therefore, it's empty."
    "And what does all this have to do with serving the Queen and the mound?" asked the fifth ant.
    "If you don't believe in the sugar, ..."
    "Honey."
    "Whatever."
    "... you won't be a good ant.  You won't forage, and you'll break the line, and ... other terrible things," concluded the first ant.
    "I don't do any of that stuff," said the third ant.
    "Maybe not," said the first ant. "But you have to be watched.  And Number Five over there, too."
    "Anyway," said the fourth ant to the fifth, "you have to choose!"
    "That's right," agreed the other ants. "Don't be a fence-straddler.  Show some character!"
    "If it's all the same to you," said the fifth ant, "I think I'll just get this grasshopper leg into the mound."

*Pa-dum-pum.