The Grossest Thing�

2002-09-10

I saw the grossest thing the other day. I hung a hummingbird feeder by my chair. It's one of the ones that have the little glass bottles in a wire tray. I keep having problems with the ants getting the nectar, not the hummingbirds. I've been told that a line of vaseline around the holder will keep the ants from getting in, but up until a few days ago we had no vaseline.

The last time I filled the feeder the hummingbirds used it for a while and then stopped. I thought the nectar might be getting moldy, but I didn't see any mold. Lazy me just left it. Then the other day I looked again. The whole inside of the feeder was black. I couldn't believe that much mold could grow overnight. It wasn't mold. It was ANTS. Hundreds and hundreds of ants. Thousands of ants. The bottle was half full of ants. Live ones standing on top of the deads ones and more coming all the time. I was tempted to try to clean it out, but only a little. I really did not want to touch that bottle. For two more days ants filed into the bottle. They filled it up completely. Then, yesterday, when I went home, they were gone. Every. Last. One. I couldn't believe it. Tributes to the industriousness of ants are all understatements.

We've had ants in the house, too. Now we get them pretty regularly in the summer. When it gets really hot or it's been really dry. It's been both this year and the ants are getting out of hand. We've been having to put the cat food into pans of water just to keep the ants out.

I went home the other day and found ants all over the newt's terrarium. Fortunately they don't seem to bother the newt; they just want his water and any newt doo available. They ate all of the newts crickets. I bought two dozen crickets and fed the newt three. They were ALL gone. Not a leg or an antenna to be found. I'm running out of pans to put things in. I'm also running out of patience for ants.

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