Ants in the house

So being the big geek that I am it's no real surprise that I'm familiar with the web page ThinkGeek.com. And though I've looked at all kinds of their stuff and even wondered "Why shouldn't I get a remote controlled missile launcher for my desk?" I've never actually had anything from there, until now. See a while back I spotted one item that I thought could be kind of cool to have on my office desk. Near the time that I was finishing up my Ph.D. a couple of friends and I got a fish tank and many colourful fish for our office. It was a nice little distraction from time to time, but not something that I want to have to deal with again, it was far too much work to clean and feed the fish. Which is why an ant farm is so perfect for a desk pet!

Ok, it sounds kind of lame but check this ant farm out. If you don't bother to read the details there I don't know why you'll read them here, but let me just say that I think it's kind of cool that NASA developed a polymer for the ants to live in, eat and drink and that's transparent. So I let Deirdre know that I would like one for Christmas, and surprise, surprise, I got one (from one of her sisters, it was a secret santa thing). Of course it came with the caveat, I was not to fill it with ants while it was in the house.

Well, I ordered the ants, yes, you can do that on-line now too, and they arrived here, because I didn't want them lost in the receiving department at the university. But they arrived on a Friday, after several days in the mail. So clearly releasing them into their new home was the only humane thing to do. Incidentally, you ship ants in a small plastic test tube sandwiched between foam in an envelope.

Despite her reluctance Deirdre seems to have taken a bit of a liking to the ants, I think she's been watching them more than me. But they truly are fascinating to watch. It took them only a couple of days to tunnel what you see in the pictures below (and they barely did any work in the first day or so). I am concerned by the piles of "dirt" they are making at the walls though. I think they may be hatching a plan to escape. I'll keep you posted if anything develops. I have a few more pictures, including one with the internal lights turned on, but Blogger is being stupid and I can't load them up now.