Last Update

I know I haven't posted on this for a while but I fear this will be my last post.

The red ants
For a reason known only to them self the red ants decided to chew up their queen and then stop eating. So as you can imagine the colony slowly petered out.

Tweedlies
Some time ago after an incident involving a melting cheese slice incident in which the majority of ants perished I was left with the three queens ( Tweedlie, Graham and chipper). Graham quickly set about and killed Tweedlie and Chipper which left her on her own with one worker who died some time later.

It is my sad duty to inform you all that tweedlie passed away at some point last. I plan to bury her tonight at the bottom of my garden among the flowers and in the shade of the trees.

She will be missed.... I plan to eBay the ant farms as the memory is too painful.

That is all. :|

Lots of boring stuff

God, where to begin. Because it’s been so long since I last updated this is going to be a pretty big update. If your easily bored then you can scroll to he bottom looking at the pretty pictures as you go and read the summary at the bottom of this entry.

There is no order to this at all.

Beetle Cull

The ants have been feasting on the black beetles that I found and squashed in the back garden. It seems I have been a little to efficient in hunting and killing of the beetle.

Like the early American settlers thought about the buffalo I thought the beetles would never run out. Well they kind of have. I have been feeding the ants on lots of kitchen scraps with varied success. They, in their retarded collective wisdom, decided to attack a cheese slice on mass. It was a hot day and the cheese was slightly melted..... several brave ants died in the fight. The cheese slice appeared to be unharmed.

Cheese 1 - 0 Ants

New red ants

Woo, new ants, vicious little buggers too. The swarm over food and attack it. When I left them this morning 10 of them were quite happily stinging and biting a cheese slice to death. See, I said they were vicious. Click here for a larger image of the Lil red buggers in the collecting tub....

The red ants are Myrmica ruginodis found British Isles, and Northern Europe. They are pretty small, smaller than the Tweedlies ant the orphans.

When I got them home they were still in the tub I used to collect them and it looked like one of the ants was being attacked by 3-4 of the others. It turned out to be a queen but by the time I managed to rescue her, killing a

few ants in the process, she only had 3 legs left. I called her tripod :D and put her own her own wee tub….. Stupid thing died though. This species of ant can have up to 100 queens in a colony, so I might not be as buggerd as I initially though.

Tweedlies
The cocoons hatched, they pretty much all hatched on the same day, there were at least 100 ants running bout inside the ant farm. It was pretty cool.

So I fed them some honey. If you ever keep ants don’t feed them honey… it’s a big. Within 10 minutes five of the newly hatched ants had drowned in the honey. I removed the honey and fed them a beetle from the freezer. They seemed to be doing OK.

Honey 1 - 0 Ants

With in a few day I noticed more and more dead ant bodies in the colony’s rubbish pile (yeh they do actually have rubbish piles…. Told you ants were cool). I counted today the three queens Tweedlie, Graham and Chipper and about 10 workers are alive.

I really don’t know what happened, but more than 100 ants died in the space of a few days….I am the Pol Pot of the Tweedlies world which makes me a bit of a shit.

Tweedlies Update
I noticed some green mould sporting a Don King style hair do in the centre of the Tweedlies ant farm. I'm guessing it was food they had stored and not managed to eat before it went mouldy. There was no way for me to remove this mould so i decided the Tweedlies should move home.

I've found the easiest way to move large numbers of ants is to use water as a barrier, stops the ants running off. So poured some water in the bath and opened the ant farm. With in seconds most of the ants were like lemmings off the edge and into the water. I managed to save them all and put them into their new tub.

All three queens survived the Don King mould attack....

I suppose I better get back to work now....

shite :(

Don't forget this is the link to the mailing list if you want to be added or removed.

Wow wee, dead beatles and a mailing list

Well first off I have created a mailing list that you can subscribe to, its automatic and all that jazz so even the less technically minded of you should be able to do it. I has one of these "special people" help me test it out so it should be easy. To subscribe all you need to do is click here.

See, simple pimple. Please sign up to the mailing list it will make me ever so pleased....

/begging

Right, the update, Lets go....

I had a BBQ to christen the new house, so i had it all set up nice wee fire going the coals were starting to warm up nicely. I ran my mates lady friend to go get some orange juice for her gin. Upon my return the so called friend... pah.. had put the BBQ out. He claimed he was "trying to fix it", good job Sunshine, put the bloody thing out.

So Pissed off and hungry I sprayed some lighting fluid on the coals and lit it.

It turns out that 1/3 or a bottle of lighting fluid is a tad too much, this was pretty clear as a 7-8 foot column of flame shot out of the BBQ singeing a rather lovely tree and redecorating a wall of the once red hut a lovely black.

Whats this got to do with ants... Nothing really, but while we were waiting about i decided to go kill some things to feed to my ants. I managed to track down and kill 5 rain beetles 4 of which are living in my freezer. Click here for a larger image containing beetle guts and gore and stuff.... They must have been defective though, it didn't rain or nuffink... the weather stayed lovely all day. I'll need to start giving them live food, see how they deal with that.

Tweedlies
I have covered over the ant farm to make it dark and taken away this sock to encourage the ants to move home back into the dirt. Its taken them almost two days but they have moved back in and are digging away again. They have gone egg laying crazy, when i counted there were 060 Eggs (approx), 020 Larvae and 60 Pupa (up 50 odds from 2 weeks ago) . If they all hatch in the next few day and there is cannibalism or mining accidents that will give me 100+ ants.

Larva


Pupa
image has been shrunk to fit

The best thing i found out this week is that the little black dots on the end of the pupa.... Well that's baby ant poo...... titter.

Remember to subscribe to the mailing list, all you need to do is click here.

Moving house.. still

Just to let everyone know that the ants are still alive, kicking and killing things....

Because I'm still in the process of unpacking stuff I can't find the cable for my camera as its it very very small and the pile of crap i have is very very big.

There should be an update in the next few days, if you want to be mailed when the update is online you can join them mailing list i have set up here.

Ants have moved home

Well it’s taken a few £’s and I’ve got a sore back because of it but myself and the ants have finally moved house.

My walking style which has been forced upon me by my sore back is similar to that of a pensioner with a full nappy. Anyway…. back to the ants.

The Tweedlies have been busy. Laying eggs like nobody’s business the two images below show sections of this image, I think its kinda cool.. I also think that they are eating some of the eggs.

About 10 of the eggs look they have developed into larvae and more of the eggs have cocooned. It’s really hard to count them so I hatched a plan.

The ant farm is set with two pieces of card at each side. This keeps the ants tunnels in darkness which they like and allows the above ground section to have daylight. Every time I remove this card to look at them they scurry about grab the eggs and run.

My plan involves a piece of highly scientific equipment….. A sock. I theorised (notice how I’m picking up all the lingo with me doing all this science) that if I covered a magnifying box with a sock (making it dark) and removed the card from the sides of the main ant farm (making it light) that the ants would eventually move to the dark magnifying boy. So was my theory right….. You bet your ass it was.

I managed to count the ants by removing the sock and quickly taking a photograph. I have marked the workers and the queens on the image below but the eggs can't really be seen in the image, I counted them with the naked eye.

* = Worker * = Queen

I counted the following using this larger image -
034 Workers
003 Queens
007 Pupa
035 Larvae
060 Eggs (approx)

The back garden to my new house is full of beetles and woodlice. I killed three beetles with the wheelie bin and decided to feed them to the ants.... They seemed to like them.

I'll get it Duckie Poos

Just because I can.... Well I did an experiment.. Enjoy the read, I have been told the video is the best bit....

Comments Welcome

Pan Breed

Well, Ive been moving house which is great fun so I haven't been updating much... That's my excuse anyway and I'm sticking to it.

One of the Tweedlies is dead. With due care and respect I popped its wee lifeless body onto the scanner. To give you an idea of size the ants head is 2mm long.

I'm shattered and busy so I'm heading to bed....... I did get this weird email that made me laugh... Not sure why..

I read your webby!
Really enjoyed it, v. funny!
My mum said I shouldn't e~mail you... but I have anyway...
I have an Ant World at home it
doesn't do much... I don't have a queen, and I don't have a credit card so I can
order extra bits to make it more interesting...
IT'S MY B'DAY IN 6 DAYS!!
I'm only 11...
Sorry... That was very random...
Sorry... For boring you
Sorry... G2g I have a BBQ

Byezy Bye,
From
Me.

Queeeeeens

Its official, there are 3 queens in the Tweedlie colony. So their names are Queen Tweedlie, Queen Graham and the newly discovered Queen Chipper. You can see all three lard asses in the in the image below.

Ready for some education here.... Are we sitting comfortably now children... ? Then I shall begin.

Well when your mummy and daddy met each other, they decided they liked each other very very much and had a special cuddle. Your daddy planted his see in your mummy's tummy and one joyous day 9 months later you were born.

I am assuming it was joyous, I don't know all your individual life stories. I mean, your father could resent your very existence. He could blame you for stopping him from living his dreams. He could also blame because you are the reason he is stuck with the fat sow of a woman he now has to call his wife because of your miserable existence. But lets for now assume that it was joyous.

Ants are a little different. They do have a special cuddle. But they then start to lay eggs. The eggs are titchy tiny then after a wee while they turn into larva. Larva are little wormy things that don't have eyes and no legs. They eat ant sick regurgitated by adults... Mmm, yummers.

Pupa are the next stage. When the larva has had its fill of ant vomit it spins cocoon and pupates. and emerges some time later as an adult ant... Exciting hu.

So what i hear you say, why did i just waste time reading this crap. Well the orphans have been running about with two pupa. Thats all...

I've also kinda decided that I need to get the Tweedlies a bigger home. If they have 3 queens all laying eggs the colony is going to get pretty big pretty quickly. That is assuming I don't kill them by then. I'm actually pretty surprised I haven't already.

The fly..... Has arived

I took delivery of two east coast flies today. I fed the big one to the Tweedlies as protein for the Queens and the smaller to the Orphans.

This is the big one being tucked into by the Tweedlies

I'm a little worried about Tweedlie and Graham. They appear to be in two different chambers as you can see in this photograph below. From what I have read I think they will come to blows soon, they are laying lots of eggs though :)

Cool hu :)

Tweedlies house

A comment by barnettgs on an earlier post asked if I had bought 2nd Ant World for Tweedlies.

The short and somewhat boring answer is yes, I bought a second Ant world. I was planning on putting them in a tank but I wanted time to make it escape proof. I plan to transfer them sometime in the future.

When i I first put the ants in the ant world above the the soil was level with the rather fetching pink card, shows they have been busy. They have even started digging tunnels in these mounds.

Lots of lovely ant eggs

The eggs are stored in the bottom right hand corner for the ant world. I always just assumed that they were kept with the queen. I can see how many there are because they keep hiding the eggs when i remove the card to have a sneaky wee peek. I'd guesstimate there are about hm....

Queens Tweedlie and Graham
Both the Queens are now holed up in the one chamber. I have a feeling that there are three Queens but I don't have proof yet. If there is a third I will call her chipper. There are some photographs of the queens below.

Food
One comment I had suggested i feed the ants some pink things.... I did have some marshmallows... But i ate them...... Coz I'm a fatty. The flies captured by a friend are still in their freezer, I haven't had a chance to go through and get them. The Orphans have gone off the honey but both colonies love cheese. I have still to publish the food experiment I did the weekend before last. Will do it in the next few days... I think its worth the wait :D

Great big drity dead fly

One of my friends has promised me a great big dead fly. They found it today and they are keeping it in the freezer for me.

I have great friends :)

I ran an experiment over the weekend and the results (which I will post later in the week) from the Tweedlies were very disappointing to say the least. The orphans did very well though.

The Tweedlies (and the orphans) are in standard ant world ant farms like the one here-


The Tweedlie ant farm only had one magnifying box connected via one of the portals (see diagram) which made the other portal a dead end. I decided they might have performed so badly in the experiment because of this.

I decided to attach one end of a tube to the capped off portal of the Tweedlie colony and attach the other to the magnifying creating a loop.

I slowly removed the cap and saw a wee black leg and head poke out. So I put my thumb over the portal cap and quickly jammed the tube onto the portal. Immediately three ants shot out into the tube like retarded bullets, falling over each other and it looked like two were having go at the 3rd.

So I peeked into the cap that I had covered with my thumb. It contained two ants and about 40 eggs, looks like they had been using it as their nursery which make sense because it’s the darkest part of the ant farm.

I dropped the cap into magnifying box and by the morning the eggs and the two ands had disappeared, ants are cool :)

Food
I managed to kill a jumping spider that was preventing me from brushing my teeth and a fly. The tweedlies ignored the fly and dragged the dead spider about for a bit then left it. I gave the spider to the orphans who quickly attacked the already dead spider for several minutes then ate it. So the Tweedlies win the gay ant award this week. Both colonies have been eating the honey well.

Some ant on ant action

I finally got the colony with the queen transferred to an Ant World, less chance of them escaping. And now the colonies have names Woo hoo :)

The first colony of Lasius Niger ants that came in the post has been named the “Orphanage” and the colony housing queen Tweedlie has been named the tweedlies “Tweedlies”, still not sure what species they are but I know there not Lasius Niger like the lil orphan ants in the Orphanage.

Just As I’m writing this I noticed that the Tweedlies have what looks like two queens, there are now two fat six legged balls of spunk and ovaries in the colony instead of one…yay.

I have named the second one Graham.

Ant Disney
All is going to plan with ant Disney, they have a little rubbish tip, a moss garden and a sand pit. Photographs to follow. If they had mail privileges or indeed if ants sent mail then their little post cards they would send would be all positive…. I think.

Food
I think I’ll have to make up a list of good and bad things to feed ants. Ants hate bacon and bacon fat ant don’t like it, they totally ignored it, now honey on the other hand they love it.

I bought the cheapest honey that money can buy, Morrison’s own brand at 90 odd pence. It stinks, I’ve never tasted honey before (still haven’t) but the smell from it is disgusting made nearly made me heave. I might try some later.

I put a dollop of honey in for each lot of ants. The orphans got very excited after 5 minutes 20 ants were running around the honey but not getting too, after 10 minutes things had calmed down and one ant was eating from the honey dollop. The tweedlies on the other hand got stuck right in, after 5 minutes there were 3 ants eating after eating from the dollop. After 10 minutes five ants were tucking in…. After 15 minutes I got bored…

One strange thing about the honey though, when I got up in the morning both the orphans and the tweedlies had put lots of grit in the honey and I have no idea why.

I found a freshly dead fly (on the bumper of my car) and decided to feed it to my ants. I was going to check back every five minutes but when I looked back it was gone. So you can add to your notebook that ants like smooshed flies.

Ant on ant ActionI put a dead ant from the tweedlies in with the orphans. The ants in the orphan colony are about ½ the size of the ant from the Tweedlie colony so when the smaller ant found the larger dead ant it bolted. It came back a short while later with a pal and they kept taking runnies at the dead ant and nipping at it. After while they realised it was dead and pulled off the antenna and some legs to make sure this dead ant couldn’t get away. The are currently tucking into its big fat abdomen.

Hunners of stuff

Lots of things have happened since last time, some of it rather exciting if I do say so myself. It will probably read like a disjointed pile of poop, but here goes :)

Ant Disney
The stuff arrived, 5 magnifying tubs and 2 meters of tubing. I attached one length of tubing to the empty side of the ant farm and placed a magnifying box at the end.

Coz I’m pure ded brainy I read on t’internet that ants move the rubbish away from their nest. I hoped that they would move the rubbish (dead ants like Robert and well, ant poop, they must poop…) to the furthest away tub so I could do science type stuff with it.
When I left this morning they were just running up and down the helter skelter type tube, so we will see what they do.

New ants / Ant hunt
Weeeeeeee, new ants. Which I managed to capture using only my wit, cunning and some more wit. Well, cunning, wit, a spoon, a tub and a Karen…. But mostly the spoon.

They are the same species as my other ant’s lasius niger, but they are a good bitty bigger, at least twice the size. There is also a queen who I have named Tweedlie, she is about 10 to 15 times bigger then the workers in my first colony. Because I have her it means the colony can grow and she can have lots of lil baby ants that will ultimately grow up, leave home and become a disappointment to her.

So I spent 20 odd mins digging them up and now there all mines… woo ha ha.

About 30cm from the colony I dug up I found another one, under a rock. I coldnt see the queen but there were about 30 ants and about 50 eggs all in differnet stages. I might go back and get them at a later date, i think these ones might sting :)

The Transfer
After getting them hone I had to transfer the ants from my hunting tub to a better container. I bought a 4ltr Tupperware tub from ASDA. I had read that if you put a line of Vaseline around the top of the containers you are keeping ants in that they can’t get grip to cross it.

I tipped the contents of the hunting tub into the large Vaselined one and looked at Karen (Who was taking photos) and said with a slight giggle in my voice “look how pissed off they are” as 100+ ants swarmed out and over the lump of peat and over the Vaseline line. Karen was of no help AT ALL squeaking like a poof of a girl while running away. I hadn’t realised that I had caught so many.

Well, two managed to escape before I got the lid back on, luckily I managed to catch them quickly and pop them back in with out squashing them with my fat clumsy fingers.

I’ve decided the new tub is crap, so I’m going to buy a new ant farm and transfer over the 100+ ants, 60 odd eggs and Queen Tweedlie, I’m not sure how the hell that’s going to work though. Answers on a post card.

Food
Raw turkey, I got a tiny bit of turkey for the ants, and fed them is just as I was heading to bed. I got back from brushing am teeth and other dooings… And they had swarmed all over it. I counted 15 ants on the turkey compared to 3 ants on the coco pops. At this point I can’t say what is their preferred food, it’s a toss up between raw turkey and strawberries.

They like rasins, or sultanas, no idea what it was.... one of the kids left it smooshed into the carpet :)

Ants love coco pops

First off, no one has left one comment, 600 hits and not one bloomin comment. Even if its just out of pitty, gonna leave one.

I feel I'm making a real contribution to science here, I have now discovered that ants LOVE coco pops. By the looks of it they like coco pops more than they like strawberries.

I was heading to bed and decided to throw out the strawberry because it was going kinda fuzzy. So I cleaned out the tub and place 1 triple and 2 double coco pops just to see if they would eat them, I had read they only really like smooshy food.

In went for a pee and to brush my teeth then came back to this. They were swarming all over it… cool hu.


Update
I managed to get a photograph of robert, as you can see he is dead with his little and legs pointing up in the air. I cant get th body out, I'll need to borrow some tweezers or something. I'm sure all his buddies will miss him..... Brave lil guy.....

Diggy dig dig

I’ve ordered (well I had someone order them for me posing as the mother of a small child to save us any embarrassment) 5 magnifying boxes and 2 meters of tubing to allow me to expand my ant farm to something magical, kind of like Disney World but for ants. They should be here in the next few days.

The magnifying box which I placed the moss in last week had started to steam up to I took the lid off to wipe the condensation off and I noticed that there was lots of bits of dirt in the bottom of the box. I lifted up the moss to find two ants hanging out a tunnel which had been dug through the dirt attached to the moss. The only thing I can think of is that the moss was in the way of the most direct route to the food. The blue line represents they route they had to take before the tunnel was built and the orange shows the route of the tunnel. Smart little buggers eh…

Death
There is at least one dead ant, a prett big one so I'm guessing it was old age. We will call him Robert Paulson.

Food
Ants don’t like gammon, so fear not your pigs are safe, but look after our chickens and strawberries; so far they are the ants favourite food.

The jumpy thing ( Mr Flea )

I decided to add on the second magnifying box which gave the ants a little bit more room to run about in, they seemed to get very excited and half (20) of them came out to investigate. I took some short movies [Movie 1] [Movie 2]

Ping, if and empty box got them excited, I wonder how excited they would be by stuff…….. garden stuff.

So I got a dod of moss, bit of wood and some grass and popped them in the empty box. They went crazy for it. Running about like hundreds of crazy little bastards, they didn’t know what to do. Until they found the jumpy thing.

It was semi translucent, about the size of a flea, and jumped like a flea, I’m going to refer to it as…. Mr Flea.

The ants swarmed all over the moss which flushed the flea out of it hiding place, PING, Mr Flea shot across the box braining himself off the lid. The ants didn’t chase him, I thought the little guy might be ok.

So he pinged about for a few minutes, until he landed right in front of one of the ants which grabbed him. I think Mr Flea was killed right away, I don’t think he suffered. Rip Mr Flea

Apart from Mr Flea I’ve been feeding the ants a bit of dog chew, I think it’s a pedigree chum shmacko. They like it.

Daddy or chips, jelly or meat?

I finally managed to disconnect the magnifying box the ants came in, the first time its been totally empty since they arrived. Trying to figure out what to do with the empty box now.

I removed the covers that I had put in place to make the lower section dark and encourage the ants to dig, this picture shows what they have been up too, this one I have marked with green to show where they have been digging.

Its getting exciting, well for me anyway :)

Feeding time
I cleaned out the banana and left them a day without food, then as a treat I gave them jelly, I can't say they were overly impressed with it.

I'm sure they were eating it, just one or two at a time though.


So today I put in a small bit of sliced turkey and they were all over it, I counted 18 on the meat at one time. Click here to see a larger pic of the mini swarm.

The age old queston as now been answerd, now if anyone asks, you will know that ants prefer turkey to jelly hands down.....

Eggs, eggs, eggs... oh, N' some diggin

They little buggers have eggs, Ive seen at least 5 eggs.

All the ants (that I've seen) are the same size, so im 99.9% sure there isnt a queen. Still, they have started digging now tht ive covered both sides over with card.

Ive just noticed that there is a gap at the bottom of the card and I can see ants scurrying about at the bottom of the tank. cool :D

I havent got a pic of the eggs yet, but there is a bigger version of the pic to the left here.

Huddle

They are just huddled up together, doing... well not much.

I have placed card on one side to make the sand section darker to see if they will dig. They will also be living under my computer desk for a few days while people coime to view the house, ants arn't a big selling point. :)

4.5 Dead ants

4 and a half dead ants, not sure where the half came from....... and still no digging.

Workers not workin

There not really doing much today, they are all still huddled up in a corner of the antfarm above ground. No digging yet.

There are 2 casulties so far, well one an a bit. They have moved the dead things to one corner, as far away as possible from the bit where they hang out.

Anyone got any idea how to get them to tunnel?

There heeerrreee

I called home to see if there was any info about the house sale and the ants are here.

Well, I'm guessing it's the ants, they are in a jiffy bag marked "Live animals" so unless somone else in the house ordered a very small lion or somethign similar in my name then i think its safe to say they have arrived :)

Urgent Live creatures

** Got interupted so more images to follow **

The poor wee buggers arrived in a small jiffy bag, but they are really pretty cool. I took a few photographs of them in the shipping tub / magnifying box, but they came out blurred. If you zoom into 100% you can see some shiny ant asses.

Had a slight panic, I lost the tub for about 10 minutes while I was eating cake. Short lived panic though I found them under a newspaper. Further examination of the tub showed that the ants came with a bonus bit of worm (dead) and only one ant death so far.

So, I followed the instruction booklet and mixed the sand and mud with some water until it had the consistency similar to that of a sand castle and pour the mixture into the ant farm. Pour my arse, you ever tried to pour a sand castle into a 1mm X 4mm hole…. Snot easy.

The ant farm was ready, I popped the ants into the fridge for ten minutes (I read it on the tinternet, slows them down) and then plugged the tub into the main ant farm.

First 10 Minutes
Nothing, they are all huddled in a ball still in the original tub.

First 20 minutes
Movement, one ant (who I have named Barry) went down the tube into the main ant farm. Barry made it to the middle of the ant farm and then just stopped. See big barry.

First 30 minutes
Barry is still sitting in the middle of the ant farm, still no real movement from the others.

Things are going slowly so I decided to try two things to wake them up and get them moving, both very scientific.

I added a lump of banana to a feeding box (came with the kit) and plugged it into the opposite side of the ant farm after about 30 seconds Barrys antennae went mental, flicking about… then Barry just continued to sit… and do nothing…

The second thing I did to get the lazy bastard worker ants to live up to their name was to covered the tube closest to them with my sock which I had just removed. Here comes the science bit :). I theorised that the warmth and darkness provided by the sock would be more inviting than a magnifying box which they were sharing with a bit of dead worm.

I was right, 15 mins later they were all huddled together in the tube, I tried the same tatic to get them into the farm, that worked too….. :)

I’m heading to bed now and this is how the ants look just now. They appear to be feeding from the banana ok, but only a few of them are going to the banana and it looks like they are feeding the rest.

Are ants safe from poodle attack?

Was having a nice long lie when the mormons (or some similar cult) came to the door. I ignored them for long enough and they gave up.

But as a parting shot just to add to the annoyance they posted through a leaflet, some crap about a cross. Anyway, the dog heard the leaflet hit the floor and shot off like a rocket. I got to the front door and the leaflet was 5ft down the hall, full of teeth holes and being chewed by the dog (who was obviously very proud of herself).

I gave the dog a pat and promptly went back to bed, but I’m a little worried that my ants will suffer the same fate at the mormon leaflet.

I also checked my online bank statment and the money for the ants has come out of my account..... yay.

Fingers crossed they will be there when i get home tonight and not attacking the dog.

mud

While waiting impatiently for my ants to arrive I had a read through the users guide and it suggested that I collect some dirt to mix in with the sand supplied, so I did. And in truly obsessive blog style I’ve taken a picture of the mud.

It’s weird to think as your reading this that my ants are in a box on their way to me. Well, not as your reading this…. Well it could be, but it’s more accurate to say that they are in the post as I’m typing this as I don’t know when your reading this…..

I’ll stop rambling…

Sit back and wait

Well, £4 (which included P&P) from the trusty old visa and that’s my 40 ants ordered from Interplay, they will be dispatched on Wednesday or Thursday so should be with me by the end of the week.

I can almost imagine them, scurrying about now, with all their little chums, pondering what life holds for them, only to be put in a wee pot and posted 100s of miles cross country to me, to live out their natural lives sandwiched in between two sheets of plastic filled with sand and dirt. Sad hu :)

Just a quick note to anyone ordering ants from interplay, the number to call has been changed from 01248 853 909 to 01628 488 944, and they only sell workers.

Bloomin public holidays

Called Interplay to order my ants... They are closed

I got an email back from the Edinburgh Butterfly & Insect World, they dont sell their ants but gave me an email address of a guy to mail at the NCMLS Museum of Life and Science.

I'm gonna go eat some eggs.

Ant hunt....

I decided after reading up that It was too cold and too early in the year to collect some ants but I wanted to have a quick look anyway….. Just incase.

Ant hunting day, started early for a Saturday, I was up and out for about 1pm, by which point the weather had turned and was kind of wet.

While driving to the secret location of the great ant hunt I dove past the Edinburgh Butterfly & Insect World where they had leaf cutter ants. I’ve emailed to ask if I can buy a queen when they hatch, 100% sure there will be no answer... But dont ask dont get :D

So after that and some unsuccessful hunting (I did find a dead bird) it was time to head home and use the order form that came with the ant farm.

I’ll call Monday :)

Ants….. Wooooo.

I'm getting a little excited.

While preparing to move from a 3 to a 2 bedroom house I decided it was time to throw out some crap. I was up the loft looking through the things I had stashed away over the years, every time I go to throw something out a small voice in my head says “We might need that” so I keep it.

Raking through one of the bigger boxes I found my Interplay Ant World :D

I got it as a gift for my 21st birthday from a friend of mine who later went psycho and stopped talking to me, something to do with her boy friend I think… Wimmin eh :)

So anyway, I have an ant farm, Ant Farm, ANT FARM, ANT FARM, ANT FARM, ANT FARMMMMMMMM.

All need to do is get some ants….