Lord Gonchar

This past Christmas my daughter got an ant farm. Technically it’s an “Ant Gel Habitat” and instead of dirt it uses some kind of gel developed for and used by NASA for space ant experiments…or something like that.

As you can imagine, an ant farm is pretty boring without ants. Luckily a neat little form was included and for the small fee of $3 you would be sent some ants. You could, of course, simply go outside and scrounge up some ants, but this is Ohio in the middle of winter. Plus, I suspected the ants they send might just be space ants so we filled out the form and faxed it off to the ant people.

Fast Forward to today.

I check the mailbox and find a padded envelope addressed to my daughter with the dubious warning of, “Caution! Live Ants Inside” or something similarly ridiculous. A few moments later and we’ve pried open the envelope to find a vial inside. Like the kind of vial you’d get crack in except it’s a mass of ants… non-moving, dead looking ants. Also inside was a small slip of paper with “CAUTION! DO NOT TOUCH THESE ANTS!” writting in big bold letters on it and then a few paragraphs about how touching a harvester ant can suck. Needless to say it wigged the kids.

So we’re looking at our vial of dead ants wondering what the deal is. I figure what the hell and grab a plate to dump them on. Now we have a plate of dead ants and two kids who expect them to go nuts and eat us all without warning. We notice a couple of them moving their legs slowly, but the whole bunch is still in a big mass.

I start trying to seperate the mass and determine who’s dead and who isn’t. We get one pried from the huddle and drop him in the habitat. Root around, get another and so on. After about the fifth ant we realized that not as many were dead as we thought – they just seemed all lethargic from the cold. Being the bright guy I am I lean in real close and breathe on them – kind of like the way you breathe on a window or mirror to fog it up. A few more started moving and one or two started walking. We scooped them up now we’re realizing we just need to warm them up so I do the breath thing again and apparently I possess the breath of God himself because the pile of ants just came alive in an instant. My son bolts across the room terrified of the awesome threat of the harvester ant so I quickly pick up the plate and dump the ants into the habitat. Another warm breath and I put the lid on. In a matter of minutes we had 25 scurrying ants – not a single one dead.

The instructions said it could take as long as 48 hours before the ants began digging tunnels so we backed off and let them be for a bit.

About two hours later I realized they sent us advanced ants. They already had a good workflow going and tunnels were starting.

It’s oddly fascinating and I found myself going back just to watch them on and off again all evening. In fact, the whole family did. As lame as it sounds, it should be fun watching them burrow their way into the space gel for the next month or two. (the booklet says they live 1-to-3 months)

I took a few pics of our new colony:

As I write this it’s about 5 or 6 hours since I took those photos and they still haven’t let up for a second. If anything they’re moving faster and even more organized. They got some good tunnels going.

And if you’re the type to be way too amused by such things, then score your own Ant Gel Habitat.