My ants were left alone for the weekend and while there were no great monuments built to me, they also did not die. I can accept this lack of extremes.
Today was another watering day…an activity that fills me with dread. When the ant farm was first set up, you had to pour in quite a bit of water to make sure that the convenient, easy to carry sand was evenly moist for the comfort of the ants. Now the sand is dry and I am only to put in a few drops of water but I fear that I won’t put in enough and it will distribute itself too evenly and the ants wont be able to survive this horrible arid experience.
Watering time brought unmatched excitement to my ants today. With freedom hill complete and functional I was wary of opening my ant farm to water them, as well I should have been. Upon opening the village section and squeezing the eye dropper of clean water, the ants scattered and made a break for it. The ants had planned well in the construction of their beloved freedom hill, but how could they foresee the world outside their village? One brave ant made it out, hitting the surface of the file cabinet with a barely audible click. He recovered and ran, what else could he do? He ran straight for the edge of the cabinet where I stood waiting with the cover to their village. He was promptly tossed back in and the village sealed.
Surely this ant must have been awestruck at his experience. What would you think if you ran off your world and made a great leap into the unknown only to find yourself falling from your sky back into your world? You would think you had discovered a wormhole in the universe. Your fellow ants would see you as a mythical hero. You would be part Antstronaut, part Albert Antstein. Your fellow ants would throw a parade in your honor and you would feast on succulent sprouts and suck water from the ground. Surely, your fellow ants would want to do that if your fellow ants had the ability to remember stuff that had happened 30 seconds before. Fame and glory are fleeting in the ant world.
Today my little ants are sluggish and boring. After mulling the situation, I have determined that it is because it is noticeably cooler in my office now than it was last week. Our cooling system was set to deal with the high tempuratures last week and now that it is cooler this week the system can pump out very cold air. Even I am slightly chilled. I can almost hear my ants complaining. “What is this with the coldness? We used to be happy. It was warm and it felt good. Now we got cold, and we got young ants dancing in the walkways and buildings. What do we want for buildings. Acch, what I wouldn’t give for a little of the old days.” “But, papa, don’t you remember? The sand was not so convenient or easy to carry then. And there were many creatures who ate us. Papa, we have food and we have water, such as it is, and an amazing lack of ant eaters here.” “Feh, go on with you. My knees hurt from the cold.”
i will look into heating options for them soon. On a side note: Carbon dioxide still sends them into a frenzy, but a slower, more sluggish frenzy.

Like fast learning children, my ants know that freedom is up. To this end, they have constructed a glorious roundtop hill that they may climb and reach the edge of the cover. Upon reaching the edge, they may dangle from it as though the price of freedom is the presidential physical fitness award in the ant world. No such luck for these ants. All that dangling ony serves to make them tired and attract the “GIGANTIC EYE OF THE OUTERWORLD”.
My Uncle Milton Ant Farm Club Ant Feeding and Care Schedule tells me precisely when to feed and water my ants but it doesn not tell me where. It was watering day and my instructions tell me to “add a few drops of clear drinking water”. Add it to what?? I just squirted it onto the convenient, easy to carry sand and hoped for the best. Suck, my little ants, suck this water for life!!
Even more sprouts showed up proving my ants are truly worthy of any awards or recognition that might come their way from the farming ant community. They are truly The Masters of Their Universe with their abilities to maintain a hectic city life as well as cultivate food for themselves and future generations. Many of us would do well to look to the ant for the kind of inspiration that is lacking today.
Even with their heart-rendering, inspiration-inspiring activities, I still found my ants to be losing steam in the entertainment value area. They had already built their tunnels and they eat regularly and they even came up with their own dance moves, but the fire seems gone. Granted, I have argued with myself and some of those arguments were compelling “They’re just ants, let them live comfortably and naturally. You can’t learn about ants if they are acting contrary to nature. They aren’t circus ants, they are harvester ants. God, haven’t they given you enough already. “. Eventually i told myself to shut up and I decided to try something. I know that ants are very closely related to bees and wasps. I also know that bees react strongly to increased carbon dioxide as a sign of an intruder breathing in their space (first breathing, then honey stealing and bee squishing and hive smashing, best to stop it early). I wondered if ants would also react to carbon dioxide increases. So I blew in their air holes and and boy do they react. they aren’t as organized as cartoon ants, but they jump to attention immediately and they all run in circles tapping each other on the head and searching for their intruder.