And the Ants Go Marching One by One…

Hoorah! Hoorah!

The ants actually do kind of get a Hoorah from me now. Yes, I’m afraid I’ve just become a little bit dorkier.

My mom will hate I admitted this, but just recently we had an ant invasion. My step-dad wanted to annihilate them. My mom and I couldn’t bear it. I was researching online one day ways to discourage ants naturally and one suggested to mark their trail with dish soap. The next time I found the ants marching as a troupe toward my old tea bag, I busted out the soap. I wound up encircling several of the ants in their own rings of soap on accident. That’s when I discovered how “AWESOME” it was to watch them. It would be easier to show you rather than tell you what they were doing, but I’ll try: the ants would lift their front legs and use them to “run over,” or wipe, their antennas, alternating on each side. One started and then the next and the next and the next. They were signaling to each other! I got down on eye level just watching this madness. I was incredulous. I have been around ants for as long as I can remember and I never bothered to actually “notice” them, to observe them. They’re fascinating. I also saw the escaped ones racing along their “route” up the wall, stopping to tell all others on the way what was going on. They would do so by pausing, meeting antennas to antennas and then moving on. What the heck? I will never be able kill an ant again now. How can I? On a second observation, they did the antenna wipe and a butt wiggle.

The next day I found my step-dad was killing the ants with a honey-borax mix. Oh the cruelty! I just watched them do “the butt wiggle” and now he’s murdering them with sweet stuff??

I can’t wait until my new Macro lens comes in the mail. It’s only a 60mm but I’m hoping I’ll be able to use it to capture the “antenna wipe.”

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 12:02 am. It is filed under Musings, Spiritual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.