Ant High Rise . . .

Scattered through out our yard are these Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps. You can get them at Loews or Home Depot for four or five dollars apiece. They have a single LED and rechargeable battery with a photo voltaic cell on the top. So they recharge during the day and the battery does a fair job of keeping it lit though the night time. It has a light sensor to detect when it is dark or lite to turn it on and off.

Well while stepping out on my daily walk I noted that one of the lamps was chock full of dirt. That ain't normal, I mean the thing is sticking up in the air 10 or so inches. Dirt don't climb by itself.

So a closer look determined a colony of ants had converted our lamp into a high rise apartment complex. Shades of modernization!

The ground was pretty wet from the recent rain so I just pulled it up the entire assembly and set it next to the curb, top down with top off of it. I figured the cold would drive out the ants and I could clean it up and put it back to normal use again.

I retrieved it a couple of days later and brought it inside and washed a ton of dirt out of it. Took about 1o minutes to get the majority of the detritus out of the lamp, And there were a few tough ants still inside of the assembly. I squashed a bunch of them and washed them down the sink. A couple ants managed to get on me but I detected them and squashed them too.

I left the top out side to charge up so will retrieve it and put it back together with the remainder of the assembly. Must think through just where to place the lamp to avoid another high rise. There is one lamp on the other side of the flower bed about four feet away but it as yet has not been converted by the ants.

I can just see it now. Some little real estate ant is pushing high rises for the colonies. Had one going too. But this old human put a stop to that. I will sprinklie a little ant poison out there too. I'll stop the whole development in its tracks. I wonder if the EEO people will get after me for doing this.

You just never know who moves into your neighborhood these days.