Ant Farming

I guess we can add ants to the list of domestic animals on our farm now. This was another of Grace’s Christmas gifts. It has been sitting in the closet since Christmas as we awaited the arrival of ants from Uncle Milton.

Bryon wanted to get this gift for Grace because he always wanted to have an ant farm. Actually, he did have an ant farm, but his mom would never let him get the ants for it. She didn’t want them escaping into the house. Not to be deterred, he caught some wild ants and filled it up. As soon as she saw them, she made him dump it back out.

Grace’s ants arrived Tuesday in our mailbox. Bryon and Grace got their new home ready that night and deposited them into it. The flyer says they’ll live a few months. They are harvester ants. You use a tool to make the three starter holes then the ants are supposed to start tunneling and doing their anty thing. So far these ants have been pretty lazy.

We saw one or two squirm down one of the tunnels then back its bus right back out. I’m also pretty sure three or four of them are already dead. Mostly they’ve just been hanging out on the top and eating their way to the bottom. The green medium is both food and fun.

I am sympathetic to Bryon’s mom on this front. It seems wrong to BUY ants and bring them into the house when the last two years we had to pay to have them exterminated. If these fancy harvester ants don’t make it. By spring we’ll have a whole new crop of hardy Missouri bathroom ants we can scoop up to take their place.

Oh how I wish I could play the Pink Panther theme on this post. You’ll just have to imagine it for yourself. You know how it goes … dead ant, dead ant … dead ant, dead ant, dead ant.