
I got mad as hell. Not just at the one little jerk, at the whole
species. They should have taught that
one more manners than to bite me for no reason.
Now, they all have to pay. Hoo hoo ha ha ha hoo hoo (scary laughter)
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Commodore Agent 54 |
I immediately commissioned myself the Commodore
of the Arizona Ant Naval Academy (AANA).
Our one and only mission, to teach as many Ants to swim as possible. This task would be hard but, sometimes, I’m a
hard man.
I would teach the Red Army Ants to swim the
old Pennsylvania Dutch way. The Pennsylvania
Dutch will take their young men fishing.
A father and an uncle or two will row the boat out to the middle of the
lake or pond where they throw the young man into the water and row back to
shore. The youth learns to swim most of
the time.
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Ant grabber |
The Red Army Ant’s nest are easy to
find. They eat everything around it and
when you drop something on the hole, they attack with the tenacity of tiny
wolverines. I used my trash grabber
stick ($19.97 at Home Depot) to put wet pinecones from the pond on those ant
holes. The water seeps in and within
seconds every ant gets the message “we’re under attack!”. They swarm the cone and when it’s completely
covered with ants, I grab it with the stick and toss it into the canal or
pond. Some ants bail as the cone is
airborne but, most stay until “Ker plunk!” into the drink.
This is the point where the Red Army Ants are
most severely tested and where they always fail. Yes, they try.
They flail their legs and antennae and whatever else they have but, it
is useless. They don’t know what the
heck they’re doing. They can’t
coordinate their movements to get themselves headed in any direction even if
they could figure out what direction they wanted to go. The ants can’t follow instructions in English
at all. They just don’t listen!
So the Red Army Ants float on downstream at
the surface or slightly under it until the fish come. The ants that have the most energy often
become the first to be fish food. Blue
Gills, small Trout and tiny young Bass begin to feast.
I shake
my head and go get some more ants hoping one day one lousy ant will swim to
shore and give me a wink. Hoo hoo ha ha ha hoo hoo (scary laughter).
