Last week when I told you the bad news about spiders I said that next week, which is this week, I would be telling you the good news about spiders. And I will. Next week.
Why the delay?
The reason for this switch is because on Monday evening I saw the biggest ant I’ve ever seen. And he was in MY office! I reckon he was well over half an inch long, or in modern terms, about 20 cm. He was running across my wall.
I looked at him and he looked at me. Then he started to run faster. I, of course, grabbed my camera and took a very poor quality picture, this one…….
This is a seiously big ant. He's next to a door frame.
The flash of the camera spooked him a bit and he started to run faster. At this stage I’m thinking “he’s got to go”. Now I have to point out here I am not normally the killing type. I’m the sort of guy who, when walking down the street, staring at the floor as you do, would sidestep an ant rather than tread on it.
But these ants, and I believe this was a Giant Bull Ant, are aggressive and they have a powerful sting. They are one of the largest ants in the world and this one was in my house! When I was a child I remember somebody telling me that for every human being in the world there are one million ants. So that meant there would be around 6,000,000,000,000,000 ants. One less wouldn’t hurt would it?
Into Battle
Dark Line
So I grabbed the nearest “newspaper”, which just happened to be my Samsung DVD R150 instruction manual and I clouted him with it. He went down in one. I briefly cursed at the dark line I’d left on the wall and looked down at the ant on the floor. I felt hugely superior as I took a photograph of my victim.
I then spent a few moments checking out the quality (yep, poor) of my two pictures before setting about my next task of removing the dead ant from my office floor. Except he was gone!
This ant was not dead! This thing had managed to crawl off somehow, hole up somewhere (I couldn’t find him) and who knows, like Rambo, perhaps he’s waiting until he has fully recovered and then he’s going to come to get me. I have Antbo in the house!
I don’t know what the recovery period of an ant is, but if my posts on this blog come to an abrupt end in the near future, you’ll know that I have had round two with Antbo…. and lost.
Footnote: Further research suggests that according to E O Wilson, a noted Harvard biologist, there are between 10,000,000,000,000,000 ants and 100,000,000,000,000,000 ants in the world. That means there are between 1.6 million and 16 million ants per person. So the information I was given as a child may well have been accurate at that time.
And if these figures are true, it is clear that the population growth of ants is far and away outstripping that of humans. So I am proud of my actions. Perhaps more of us should take the time out to grab our Samsung DVD R150 instruction manuals and do our bit for mankind.
The good news about spiders will be next week. Promise.
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- More Itsy Bitsy Teeny Scary Australian Things
- Kangaroo Intruder One-Upmanship Alert
- The Greatest Ecological Threat Australia Has Seen
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This evening while helping me prepare dinner in the kitchen, my daughter was stung on the big toe by an ant that looked just liked the one in your photos. The strange thing was she had a thick pair of socks on. As she’d had the socks on for some time, I can’t imagine it had been inside the sock…. so it bit her through the sock …??? The nasty little b*gger was done away with and. yes, he’s dead.
Ouch!
Through the sock aswell! That’s almost certainly what happened.
He got what was coming to him, one less Rambo ant for the rest of us to worry about. Did you use a Samsung DVD R150 instruction manual? Or have you found another way?
Mine never surfaced again, so I must have done enough damage.
Hope your daughter is OK, I’ve heard any “4 way action” antiseptic cream help.
Take care
Bob
I found your blog because I am also dealing with ant infestation. We moved into this house a couple of months ago and cannot get rid of the little beasts. I think we have a few varieties and they’re living in the wall cavities. We have brown coastal ants in the kitchen and some big ass brownish-black ants upstairs in various rooms. What should I do?? Heeeelllllp!!!
“big ass brownish-black ants” – yep, that’s the ones! you have 3 choices. 1) Tread on them. (V. slow) 2) Use some liquid ant killer drops that all the workers yummy up and take back to the Queen who snuffs it and then all the others lose the will to live 3) Call pest control (recommended). Kiss goodbye to $250 and all the ants.
Good luck Florida Girl
Cheers
Bob