Sunday, December 21, 2008

Some of The Ants Have Built an Ark


Since our state has been in a drought for a couple of years, I am not going to wish away the heavy rainfall we've been having recently. Water is good. The ground has long since passed saturation point but at least it's not the season to have planted a garden and have all those seeds wash away.
This picture is what I saw yesterday. It looks like a floating ant hill, but I didn't wade in and go examine it to be sure. There are two of them in the pond. My husband took a stick and tried to sink it but it came right back up. I've googled it and have read that the imported red fire ants will sense rising water levels in their nests and will make a ball or floating raft. It's interesting, although not what I wanted to read. It would have been an added bonus of all this rain if at least a few of the nasty creatures could have drowned.
Has anyone else seen any floating anthills?

2 comments:

countrypeapie said...

Interesting. If I've ever seen one, I didn't realize what it was. My kids have stepped into so many ant beds -- we keep diatomaceous earth around the house to dessicate the suckers.

Rurality said...

I've seen it, but never in deep water before, just in puddles.