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).

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

For some reason, our ants like the back stairs. Periodically, we hose them away. Then they return. It's the cycle of life.

In Arkansas, they have fire ants. At a funeral, by the grave site, one of the funeral home attendants suddenly fell to my knees and started flailing about my legs. I was, shall we say, agog. No one else seemed to find anything amiss. When he stood back up, he looked me in the eye, "Fire ants, ma'am." Like it was the most natural thing in the world to start manhandling a woman's legs in the middle of a funeral service. Apparently it was since everyone solemnly nodded and paid no nevermind.

I felt such a northerner.

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

I once had to exterminate ants and I felt so guilty about destroying them when they were just trying to have their little lives...but they're also amazingly effective competitors and when they get into a human's living space it's, "You or me, kid."

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

When we were doing our whirlwind tour of Peru, and had a couple of days in Amazonia, I think our guide was put out that I was as excited about the ants (real leaf-cutter ants! right there in front of my face! real army ants! right there in front of my feet!) as about the officially exciting things, like the birds and giant otters (all and each of which were 10s for way cool, too).

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. If you've had fire ants bite you, you understand that flailing about your legs was the most chivalrous thing that man could possibly do at that particular moment. Amazing how much agony such little insects can cause.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I feel guilty when I off them, too, but that guilt is alleviated by knowing that the ants will win, long-term. We're just not as intelligently designed as insects.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I havefound leaf-cutter ants carrying their bits of leaf really exciting, too. I forget at which zoo I've seen them. When I saw leaf-cutter bees in my very own backyard a few years ago, cutting bits of leaf out of my very own plants which I would much have preferred to keep intact, I found it pretty interesting, too, and watched them for quite a while.

Bees in general have better PR than ants do, since they're fuzzy, cute, and given credit for pollinating far more plants than they actually get around to. The leaf-cutter bees in western Washington are at least natives, so I sigh a bit about the leaves they put holes in, and go on.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

So, you liked the ants until they moved onto the patio. After that you wiped out the colony there and the yard around your patio is full of dead ants. This clearly entitles you to sing that:

"The ants were my friends,
They're blowing in the wind,
The ants, they are blowin' in the wind."

Thank you! Don't forget to try the veal!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes, Bruce, this made me groan, hmm, and snicker. Thanks.

[jerrykaufman.livejournal.com]

Our ants come up from between the bricks on our front porch. Suzle puts out ant traps, and something or someone keeps removing some of them. Could squirrels find ant traps interesting or useful in some way?

[bedii.livejournal.com]

No problem. I had never heard of Lady Mondegreen until I ran into the comment in "Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs" where someone complained about hearing the song over and over where all they did was sing about eating a one-ton tomato. That was when I realized there had to be a name for this sort of aural spasm--and in searching for the term I found the most famous one involving Bob Dylan's work was the ants.

As it is, thanks to Creedence Clearwater Revival I always know where to find a bathroom when nasty things are out, and the excuse for any long pauses in a Hendrix tune. Clearly I need mental floss--or a good night's sleep.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

What would the squirrels do with them? Squirrel craft projects, transforming found objects into decoration for nest and burrow. Squirrel ant traps, keeping ants out of the nest.

dpok fuilding and construction

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