Hard at Work

Let's see... it was almost 11 months ago. Cole opened a gift from Grandma Patty and Grandpa Jim. He was so excited. It was an ANT FARM! We had suggested this knowing he would love watching them dig tunnels and interacting with each other. As soon as we got home from Iowa, and all the boxes of present had been mailed down, we sent in the mail order form for our FREE ants!
It was November 2... this past Monday! We FINALLY got our ants! We all had forgotten about them until, there they were! The ants have to be delivered when the weather was between certain temperature for a certain amount of days. Well living in Arizona makes that a little difficult I guess!
All the waiting behind us, we followed the directions and Wall-ah! We got our farm up and going!


Has anyone ever watched ants up close and personal? These ants are VERY interesting to watch! Honestly I catch myself just sitting at the counter watching them for shorts periods of time! There is a light we can turn on so it is easier to see through to all the tunnels.
So far this is what they have dug (pretty good given over half our ants were dead upon arrival... Grrrr).
Speaking of dead ants, in the up close picture above, you can see some ants on the side that are heaped together. They are dead. :) In the last picture, you can see a white pile on top of the gel. The ants have gathered up and buried the fallen comrades. They carry them to a 'refuse' pile. Corpse removal possibly evolved as a way of avoiding such fungal or perhaps bacterial invasions of the colony.
I find these ants quite interesting!
I love Cole's Ant Farm!