Wanderer

#2)  An even better view with the early morning sun filtering through the blue gel. Note the brown stains at top right in the mounds... wastes? I'm not sure, but think that is possible. Also, at the surface to the left, see three ants? The one in the middle is dead. I think. Will wait a few hours before removing him to make sure. Don't want to discard anyone who's sleeping posture is unusual!

#3)  Side view of far left tunnel. I added this to the album because it clearly shows a new direction in one of the branches of the far left tunnel. It is reaching back up to the surface. Soon there will be seven tunnel entrances at the top.

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This is the third day since the red Harvester Ants became of great interest to me. Finding the dead ants cause me some anxiety because I don't know if it is because they haven't eaten the gel, they are stressed, they picked up a disease, or they were weak and old. There's no way for me to know. I remove them as I find them on the surface. There is one still in the bottom left tunnel, of which I wrote about in last night's entry. I remove one from the surface this morning.

Another thought: I'm beginning to think that not all the ants are tunnelers. Many of them, about half of them, seem to do nothing but hang out at the surface or in the tunnels. Yesterday I thought perhaps they were sleeping. But from one time of day to another, I don't know if the  ants that do nothing in the morning are the same ants doing nothing in the afternoon.

My question to the myrmecologist is this: Could some of my ants have other skills which are not being used at this time because this is not a true colony? Could this be why they appear to be idle? Or are they possibly sleeping? Do ants take naps?

What if they do take naps? That would go against what we think about insects like ants and bees, though, wouldn't it? They're always busy, industrious, focused on their jobs. We admire that trait as a society. They give to their community, they keep giving until they die. Life goes on, the community thrives as long as the Queen is laying her eggs, and as long as the colony is healthy.

Ants are polite creatures. I followed, through a magnifying glass, the goings-on of one particular ant. She dug at the furthest end of the main right tunnel, where she is just centimeters from breaking through to the left tunnel. Does she see it through the blue gel? She picks up a chunk of gel in her huge mandibles, turns, and touches each ant gently that she passes. There are about seven ants right in front of her, blocking her way, but she pauses, taps them with her antennae, they tap back and move aside. She continues to do this all the way back up through the surface, touching, tapping, moving forward slowly. Sometimes an ant blocking her way backs up into another branch so she can pass by easily, another ant steps aside and clings to a wall while she walks by on the floor of the tunnel. She passes by the mysterious sleeper ants, and they lazily step aside.

There is a traffic jam in the main right tunnel! The ants are about to chew through the thin gel barrier that separates east from west... they all seem to know that it is about to take place.

News flash! It is 9:20 a.m. and the bottom tunnels are now joined! I saw an ant run completely through from one side through the other. Where they connect is at the point of a 45 degree angle. Interesting! It's no less amazing than the joining of the Union Pacific Railroad with the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah, in 1869! Ants don't have mathemeticians and map makers and surveyors to assist in their tunneling, yet look what they do! What lowly ant? 

I haven't had many visitors to this sight. I really don't know for sure, though, unless someone makes a comment. The count at the left of the screen does not reflect visitors. There is no spell check with this program, so if I just enter directly, like I am doing now, I don't notice my errors until after I save the entry. When I re-read it in its final format, that's when the errors jump right out. To correct them, I have to go back to the original text, make changes, then come back to finished page. Each time I come back to this finished page, it is counted as a visit! So, it's really a count of all the times I have had to edit an entry. And the few people who have tried to read my verbiose accounts.

Solution: I can type my entry up in the word processor first, do spell check, then copy into this journal.

Here's a link for those interested in reading about the  history of the U.S. railroad system. It's quite informative, more for the older reader.

www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrintro.html

and one for the kids reading pleasure on same topic:

www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/fi/First_Transcontinental_Railroad

For a cool picture of that historic day, go to the following site. I tried to copy the picture for you, but would not permit me to:

http://www.cprr.org/Museum/