by artsy ants
Behold – a discovery of artistic works by ants in our very own yard!
Note the way the sand has been dug up from between the pavers into circular shapes.
Note in this detail all the big and tiny eggs and even tinier ants.
The story? We use some garbage cans for prunings that are unsuitable for the compost but are to be picked up by municipal trucks on their weekly rounds. For a few days two of these had been sitting on these pavers closer to the street. This afternoon our daughter Erika, who was visiting and helping me put out the various bins to the curb, noticed these upon picking the cans up. Wow, art by ants.
Looking closer we noted the sand patterns followed the patterns of the grooves on the underside of the cans, then noticed all the eggs, big and little and the tiny black pavement ants scurrying about in alarm, frantically carrying the eggs back down to their colonies under the bricks. Luckily and thankfully Erika had her iPhone to snap photos for me. Amazing and hard-working insects, are they not, though sometimes quite annoying in our gardens.
