Our late friends, the ants

[kate_schaefer]

I'm as respectful and entertained by the ants as the next person, unless the next person is E. O. Wilson, in which case all the ant-appreciation capacity for all two hundred people stretching out from Professor Emeritus O. Wilson in any direction has been sucked out of them and packed into his enormous and clever brain.

As I was saying, since Professor Wilson isn't in my backyard studying the ants, I don't much mind ants one way or the other. I am charmed by their ability to carry a Sherman tank in their mouthparts. I am amazed at their architectural and farming achievements. I am awestruck by the amount of pain they can cause in my ankles, which I could have sworn were protected against their little mandibles. I am wielding the broom and the watering can, and the ants are gnashing their toothless jaws and scurrying off with their little white larvae.

I did not wipe out the ant colony because they bit my ankles; I wiped out the ant colony because it was built all over my patio, and only I get to build earthworks on my patio. They outnumber me and they don't care about individual death, so they'll win, eventually, but for today, my patio is ant-free.

My patio has fewer ants than it did this morning. One or two. I think.

My patio has much less dirt on it than it did this morning. Somewhat less dirt, anyway.

I'll get the broom and the boots.

Comments

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The ants in my backyard keep moving their colony around. I'm okay with them as long as they stay out of the house, although there was one year when they were biting me as I picked raspberries and I got very cross with them.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I have another ant colony close to the hosebib. I really don't mind them, because that colony is just covering the grass with dirt, and I don't like grass, haha, those ants do my bidding. It's the ants who want to have dirt where dirt is not meant to go that I want to sweep away.

Ants who want to come inside my house will meet with boric acid (that's eyewash to us).