Okay, I have been successful for a day, yes one day...maybe I should keep my gloating over my mad skillz down to a minimum. But my ants are awesome.
So here is the story to how I became an ant farmer, becasue I know you are dying to hear it, er um read it. Wyatt, my 2nd child, has a ridiculous bug phobia. It came out of nowhere last summer. One day he was fine the next he was screaming and clawing himself out of his car seat becasue "dear lord there is a fly in the window 5 feet from me but I think it will eat me alive..." or something like that. But seriously, this fear has been crippling for him. He barely went out last summer. I would carry him out on the porch, toss his shoes out the door and lock it just to get him outside. (Yes, I did win mom of the year last summer, thanks for asking) He would sit on the porch screaming until we came up with some compromise- he stop crying and swing for 5 mins then he could come back in, something like that...what usually ended up happening is that he would pace around in a circle in the driveway swatting at bugs that weren't there until his time was up. I'm sure the neighbors went from thinking I was beating my child to maybe I have a special needs kid becasue man oh man did he look crazy.
Flash forward to this spring, the bug phobia is coming back, at the moment it seems less crippling but all the bugs aren't really out yet. So the Dr. told us we should think about counseling. Last year I was joking we'd end up in counseling but this year, well now I am dreading it. Let's take this step by step and start with an ant farm our Dr suggested, so we did.
My dear sweet friend, Andrea, found an ant farm for me on clearance- jackpot! I am a cheapy cheap person- clearance is great! But my clearance find was missing the coupon for free mail order ants. I can still get ants but I must pay. No one local seemed to carry ants. And really, why should I buy ants? A cheap person like me is not going to pay money for something that is in abundance all around me. So began my quest for ants.
I read up online about how to catch these lil buggers, I didn't find much help. I did find a few important tips 1- make sure all your ants are from the same colony and 2- if you put them in the fridge for 15 mins it will slow them down so you can get them into the ant farm.
So day one ant catching Wyatt is thrilled. We can't get ants in that farm fast enough for him. I set out with a star burst and a baby food jar with oil around the edge (oh that was a google tip too, so they can't crawl out.) Man oh man were those buggers hard to catch. I was trying to just get ants there- no dirt. I'd get them to walk on the candy but then I couldn't shake those darn things off- candy equals sticky- stupid, stupid! Finally I discovered a magic rock. I picked the rock up and an ant was on it, I shook it off into the jar, put the rock down and when I picked it up again whala! another ant! I think I got about 10 ants in and then catching ants was just too much work. I decided 10 ants was good, I mean it is a little ant farm and a lot of my googling told of people whose mail order ants had mass casualties and they only put a few ants in so I thought we'd be good.
Off to the fridge with the ants for 15 mins. Then it was time to load them in. I did not plan this well at all! What google failed to inform me of was that those little ants spring right back to life once they are out of the fridge. I'm trying to shake ants out of a jar, Levi is having to run his hands back and forth over the top of the farm to keep them in while Lucy and Wyatt stand in the way yelling " Ants! Ants on the counter!" I got most of the ants in so we shut the lid and put them in the basement (cool and dark for the first night- another google info). Wyatt kept checking on the ants but they weren't doing much. I did notice there was one light brown ant, the others were black, hmmm.... is he from a different colony? Me and my spectacular ant knowledge decided he was from the same colony but he just had a different job so he looked different, shut up you watched ants and saw they all looked different based on their jobs too, oh wait that was Bee's wasn't it- stupid Jerry Seinfeld, you should have went with ants....Okay but there are ant movie were the different job ants look different so I'm justified (in my own mind at least).
The next morning we woke up to an octo-something homicide, the one brown ant had killed the other eight ants. He had a speedy trial and was sentenced to banishment.
Try 2, pretty much the same thing- somehow ended up with ants that killed each other. Try three, I decided ant farming was not for me. I can't seem to catch ants that aren't homicidal. Plus every time I have to get these ants I feel like they are crawling on me all day long (shudder). So I sent Brad and Wyatt out on an ant expedition. They took a shovel and dug up a ton of places until they hit the mother load. I brought out some bread for them to climb on and we shook them into the ant farm directly- No freezing ants only for them to jump back to life w/in seconds this time. They captured about 25 ants.
I was certain this third time was the charm, plus of course Brad would have to upstage me here. Well, the next morning we woke up to an empty ant farm. Those little buggers were just that- little. They escaped out the air holes. Now don't tell Wyatt but there are 25 ants in his room somewhere!!!
So now I've given up and decided cheapy me is going to have to buy some freaking ants. Ants that are too big to fit through the air holes. Stupid ants, why do you need air?! But as I am sitting outside waiting for Wyatt to get off the bus I see the perfect opportunity for ants. There is an abandoned wasp nest on the ground packed full of ants- just sitting there. All I have to do is pick that thing up, toss it in the ant farm and wha-la! 200 ants in one swoop! I had been thinking about the air hole problem and coming up with solutions prior to my find so I decided to go for it.
Stupid me did try to do the fridge thing though just so I could keep the wasp nest out. That failed miserably and I had to quickly kill about 20 ants on my counter while once again Lucy and Wyatt stood in the way yelling " Ants! Ants on the counter!" I swear I should just have cameras running 24/7 in my house, I could win some serious money on America's Funniest Home Videos. Needless to say, I gave up on trying to shake them out of the wasp nest and just tossed it in and closed the lid.
The ants seemed to get to work pretty quickly. I was excited! I put tape over the air holes and then poked a smaller hole with a tack. Genius, I had decided, this is genius! And it was, kinda. By the next morning a few ants had chewed their way out- stupid working ants! But I had a better solution- duct tape! Duct tape fixes any problem right? So I should be all set. It has been near 12 hours and no one has escaped yet.
And bonus, my awesome little ants are great workers! They have made a ton of tunnels already (say that 10 times fast)! And tada! I seem to have no little Hannibal Lecter ants in there killing everyone!
I think I am the one most intrigues by these little ants. I have spent over an hour just watching them work tonight. It is pretty cool to me how they all just know what the plan is and do it. I guess they have their own ant language but wow, what a great team they make. Too bad we can't be like the ants, the non-homicidal ones that is....
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