Wanderer

It's 11 a.m. and I'll soon be on my way to town to pick up the Harvester Ants I ordered by phone yesterday afternoon. My dogs need grooming, I need to go to school and get my lesson planning for the year started, I still have all those Vacation Bible School materials and things to put away so I can find them next year, and there is a drawing I would like to finish before school starts. The house needs cleaning, clothes need ironing, but all these things must wait while I take care of my new ant farm!

The two Gretels made it through their second night in their new space-age gel home, but they will be evicted before day is done. I will return them to the place I found them and hope they can find their ways back home. Are captured ants, once returned, accepted back into their community? I don't know. I do know the two Carpenter ants do not seem very happy without their larger community. Very little digging going on. I can't even tell if they are eating the blue gel. They are very still, like they are sleeping, but it's mid-morning and I know they shouldn't be sleeping during this part of the day. I'm sure they are not dead, though, because I do see an occasional antennae movement. Do ants get depressed? I have really messed up their bio-rhythms, and feeling a bit guilty.

This is not how I imagined it would be when I bought the ant farm! I had imagined a farmful of happy ants going about their business, with all the food they could ever desire, no bad weather to deal with, no predators to fight or run from, no passing animals to dig up their home. I would give them everything they need to live a happy life. Everything, that is, except the Queen Ant. She is elusive. Yet, she is the source of all their life, their reason for living. So, by keeping these ants, essentially, I am ripping them away from their Queen, and forcing them to live without her. They will be unmotivated, tunneling, but without purpose. No eggs to care for, no community to care for except the ones trapped inside this plastic ant farm. What is aesthetically pleasing to my eyes may not be pleasing to the beings I am placing there to live.

But, the commitment has been made, the ants ordered, and I am obliged to pick them up. I must see this project through, whether I like it or not. I started it. In the process of getting it all together, I have discovered that I don't like trapping animals, keeping them, hurting them, or killing them. Any kind of animal. Insects included. Oh, I do make amends for ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes, sorry guys. These I will kill if I find them on myself, my dogs, or my friends and family.

But I immensely enjoy learning about animals in their natural habitat. And an ant farm, without a Queen Ant, is not natural. I am torn between what I know, and what I want. I am not a very good scientist!

So, this said, I will do the ant farm anyway, I will observe the colony of Harvester ants, and I will report what I see and learn as a result. Like I said earlier in the first entry, I don't know where this will take me, but I'm certain I will learn something very important from all of this.

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• #2 Comment from bgilmore725Entry Author 
  8/4/05 2:02 PM | Permalink

  Remember, maxsampat, these are red ants. Don't want to risk any of them getting out. They might not be too happy with me by now. Thanks for your comment! bg
• #1 Comment from maxsampat 
  8/4/05 8:27 AM | Permalink

  Very interesting.  I did not know ants had a Queen ant.  I only thought bees did.  Would it be possible to buy a queen?  It would be so neat to have a regular colony, complete with eggs, etc.  
  
  I could envision a long complicated tube system containing whatever they need for growth.  Maybe have it spread throughout your basement.  You could charge for tours, just enough to keep the ants fed and happy.  You could also bring classes from school.  Ants are good examples of teamwork.