Thoughts in the USA

Sometimes even I find myself putting down the camera. Hard times call for sacrificing documentary photography in order to grab weapons of mass destruction.

In short:

One ant on our bedroom ceiling. Rest her soul. During this discovery, I was talkin' on the phone to LimaB, who had a field day on me getting freaked about it.

Apparently, my gut feeling was correct. It always is.

Went out to the garage to fetch something from the drier - - -

- - - and a small section of the floor was practically moving. Lo and behold: a trail of ants from underneath a shelf in the garage was trekking all the way to the other end, up the garage sink leg and upwards along the wall. Some of them were very big and different in shape, which means it was a popular venue to which the VIPs of the nest also came, black-tie, valet parking and all (not sure it was the queen, though). They all seemed to really like Miracle Grow, which made me ponder - but I did not stop to have a chat about their queer taste. I prefered to put them all in the RIP state of being.

Investigating where they may come from was in vain. Outside, the sky was blue and the birds were chirping and the world looked innocent and totally ant-less.

Only then I saw some of those critters rushing out of our cactus planter.

"It's been a while since I've last watered the cacti", I thought, and poured a glass of water into one of them - - -

<--------- - - - - - - and that was the immediate result.

WHOA!!!

Swarming is an understatement.

A MAJOR understatement.

Y'see, this plant is a light green cactus. See the delightful blossoms on top of its finger-like thingies?

These are about seven thousand sixty nine billion three hundred seventy two million four thousands five hundred and sixty three ants.

Could be sixty four. It was hard to tell - they were moving fast! What am I, Rain Man?

By all means, click on the photo to see it larger and up close while you're sitting at your safe ant-less house. (not a bad macro photo for someone in an acute shock, eh?)

Not sure if that is the source, but The JohnnyB is going on a quest for that Combat thingy that CherkyB recommended.

So . . . anyone knows a pet store that's carrying ant eaters?

.

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Labels: Nature, Scary, This Old House, WTF?

# posted by Nava @ 4:41 PM