A NEW ANT FARM!! When I purchased the ant farm for the office here i also purchased one for home. It took forever but my ants finally arrived. A little bit of cosmic irony that on the day that I find my beloved ants dead, the mail brings me a whole new set. In death there is always life.
Setup should have been fairly easy since I had accomplished it once before, but my decendancy from apes is fairly short and of course I had issues. The village is a cylinder within a cylinder. The inner cylinder stays sealed and the ants don’t go in it. Its purpose is to keep the sand pressed firmly against the outer clear cylinder. If you are an 8 year old boy you can accomplish the assembly of this simple product but I suck and I cannot. I don’t notice how poorly I have put this together until the very end when I cannot snap the top piece in place. This would be after I wet the sand down.
I put the inner cylinder in at a slight angle, thought nothing of it and added the sand and water. When I realized my mistake I tried to move the wet sand around to the other side. Impossible. I had to break the whole thing down, scoop the wet sand into a bowl, reassemble it and then try to get the wet sand into the narrow space. Second time was a success. A messy, irritating success.
Since I was home I had access to sugar to make the requisite sugar water. I added a few drops and dumped the ants in. When they awoke and discovered this simple nectar of the gods they made a huge pile of ants on this little drop of water and not a one of them drowned. Seems ants enjoy making seething piles. I also enjoy seething…oh nevermind
After about 45 minutes they had their fill of sweet liquid and moved on to the task of entertaining me. As we know, ants aren’t all that different from farm to farm. These ants started the same way, checking the place out, moving the dead, trying to escape. Though similar in style, I am sure these new ants will bring me another 3 weeks of irrepressible ant joy.
Wish me luck as we start on our new journey.