All's Quiet on the Antsy Front

Ants Part I
Ants Part II
Ants Part III

It's been quiet again on the ant front. I always take credit when the ants disappear, but now I realize it's because they stop being active around midnight (I've been researching again.)

Apparently ants take dead ones away to the trash heap to keep from cluttering up the hallways, or from bacteria/fungi forming, so I guess the dude I saw just happened to be a Janitor Ant. He decided the cat box was far enough away from where the other ants were working, and he'd done his duty.

God I'm gonna dream about ants tonight, I know it.

I've also learned that carpenter ant workers are females--female eunuchs. So these have been femdudes I've been killing.

I also need to take a closer look at their thoraxi to be really sure their carpenter ants. [Feels disrespectful as she checks dead body.] Yes, they are.

Bugs are so interesting. I wish we didn't have to fight. And I wish I wasn't squeamish about them. Being a bugologist is the only science job I could imagine being interested in. But then you end up having to be a forensic entomologist. (I know someone who got that far, and then realized he could not work with dead bodies. He works in publishing now.)

By the way, Medieval Days and Ways is a book, in case I didn't make that clear. My brother thought it was a wonderfully named bug spray.

Night of the Ant Graveyard

Ants Part I
Ants Part II

Had to kill several ants for awhile there, but the wave seems to have ended. I don't know if they manage to get a message back through the lines: Medieval Days and Ways is out, retreat retreat!

My brother said he saw in a show that ants pick up the bodies and bring them to a graveyard, and I said: "now I feel like I didn't let them bury their dead. :-( It's gonna turn into one of those weird Earth 2 episodes, where I think I'm being menaced by ants, but no, they're just here mourning, come back to claim the bodies I put in the trash with the kleenexi."

At one point tonight one of the ants picked up a dead body and hefted it around a bit and I thought: My God it's true! Is he going to carry it back home?

He walked around a bit, dropped it, and kept on his way. Wham. Down went the book.

Just now as I was writing this, a more hearty comrade came along and picked up one of the many bodies I'd left in a pile. He started carting it across my room. I was hoping he'd take it out so I could see where they're coming from, cause it's driving me crazy. Even when I'm watching the window and heater, they appear like magic before my eyes, I never see one enter!

But I watched him carry his buddy across the length of my room, and I'm like, great, he doesn't know the way out. Or the Ant Graveyard is somewhere in my apartment.

Well it turns out it's in front of the cat box, because that's where he left the body.

For the love. I had to kill him. And his little friends too. Well I was going to, but they'd disappeared by then. I'd let two more live, hoping to watch them collect bodies too, but I guess only one was on the graveyard shift. The other got lost in my bookcase, and another vanished into thin air.

I somehow lost Medieval Days, so now it's the 1993 Writer's Market. I'm gonna have to do more research cause I do not know what they're doing. Hoping to set up a new nest in the dust bunnies under my wooden book case?? They're very interested in that one case, and that one shelf.

Maybe the last two that lived have returned to tell the tale of the dead bodies.

Return of the Ants

Ants Part I

Ahh the ants are back and in greater numbers! And Minion's pouting because when she showed me a spider yesterday I didn't kill it.

"We don't kill spiders."
"It's black and has lots of legs and moves!"
"It moves very fast and has more legs. Makes it a spider."
"Kill it!!"
"You kill it! I'm only interested in ants."

So she's being aloof.

I'm leaving the dead bodies of the ants out, as warnings. They keep coming up on my desk, which seems courteous of them.

"Hallos!"
"You know I'm going to kill you."
"I heard you were vegan."
"Have you heard of leading-a-compassionate-but-not-perfect-life?"
"No."

And down goes Medieval Days and Ways. Poor anties.

I remember a few years ago some Buddhist monks who had a bug infestation and wouldn't kill the bugs, or hire anyone to kill them. But made their problem known so if someone wanted to come aloooong and take care of it for them... Come on--

ah! Killed another and one escaped me. Where are they coming in?? I can't tell! It's gotta be right behind my desk. Gonna look again.