The saga of the ant farm

I got a nifty cool ant farm for Christmas. It's the same kind they use on the space shuttle! Instead of using dirt, it's filled with a cool blue gel that the ants can both dig in, and eat. A pretty nice all-in-one deal. They use this on the space shuttle because the tunnels in the gel don't collapse during takeoff.

Since I got it in December, I wasn't able to fill it right away. Ants are a bit thin on the ground in the winter, and they weren't able to ship any to me until the weather got warmer.

Then, in March, things began to thaw and I noticed that I had ants in my office at work. They ran around on the walls mostly, but soon found my tiny flower pots on my windowsill and attempted to move in. These pots are about 2 inches tall, so not much room there for an ant colony. They'd work all day, transferring one grain of dirt at a time out of the pot and onto my carpet.

These ants, being much larger and seemingly more industrious than the average sidewalk ant, seemed ideal for my ant farm. I began capturing them for relocation. Once I had about fifteen, I put them in my nifty cool ant farm.

Where they promptly fell asleep.

These ants were so boring. The first several days they just hung out, cleaning their antennae and attempting to escape when I'd add a new batch to the mix. The first eight actually did escape - I put them in and then went to a meeting, and while I was gone they crawled out the air holes and got away. A little masking tape solved that problem.

Eventually they did dig a tunnel, all the way down the corner of the container, straight down to the bottom. When they hit plastic down there, they must have been a little disappointed, but they didn't let up on their new found industry. Instead, they found that there was a tiny gap between the bottom of the container and the gel, and began wiggling their way in to explore. Unfortunately, it was a small gap - even for an ant - and the ants would become lost underneath the gel and weren't able to find their way back to their tunnel in the corner.

One by one, all of the ants ventured down the tunnel, never to return. You can see them there still, dead where no one can reach them.

Perhaps when it gets a little warmer I'll send away for the fancy mail-order ants. We'll see.