Drunk Ants

I think I may have mentioned ants and bugs a few times in my posts since they are such a large (and unwanted) part of my life here. I love the house I’m currently living in, but it does have a lot of ants. Many of the ants met a not-so-unfortunate death during the time we had lake-front property, but unluckily for me there were still many that survived. And now that it’s only raining a couple days a week the yard has completely dried out and the ants are free to multiply again.

But at the moment I would like to honor a few intelligent and worthy ants. (I hope that’s the only time in my life I use the words ‘intelligent’ or ‘worthy’ with respect to ants.) I’ve mentioned before that psycho-mutant Tanzanian ants eat everything and if you leave anything open or on the counter they pretty instantly manage to find and devour it. But there are a few select ants that deserve credit.

We didn’t finish a bottle of red at dinner the other night (sacrilege I know) so we left it for later- put the cork in the bottle and left it on the counter. I grabbed it last night and found a tiny hole burrowed in the cork with cork dust on the edge and counter around the bottle. On further inspection there was an ant crawling into the hole and another ant crawling down the bottle who was having a lot of trouble making it down in a straight line.

After my first flash of anger at having my wine ruined, I realized that these few intelligent ants knew that one of the true pleasures of life is a good red wine. And instead of being angry at them I should celebrate our common love. Unfortunately for the dozen or so floating in the bottle, some of them don’t seem to be smart enough to swim. Alas, I’m sure they’re not the first souls to meet their demise in the pursuit of good wine. But knocking the drunken ants out of the gene pool just means more wine for me!