The ants go marching

“One thing is for certain: There is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.” — Kent Brockman, The Simpsons


It was an all out ant attack.
OK, so it was not all out, or even really an attack. But it was enough to tip my wife’s happiness meter WAY to the bad side.
It started a few months back when Parker got an ant farm. It’s one of these space age farms with the blue gel, rather than boring old sand. The package advertises that NASA uses it. I really have no idea why they would be taking an ant farm into space. Perhaps they are avid hobbyists. Maybe one guy is taking his baseball cards, another is hauling up a coin collection. Who knows.
But the point is, Parker loves his ant farm save for one thing: No ants. Generally, an ant farm is not an ant farm without... well, ants.
So I finally got around to ordering the ants. I was going to go outside and just gather up some ants, but I figured I should follow the directions on the package, which essentially said, “You can buy some of our ants, or you can risk going outside and collecting your own ants, which will probably turn on you and, after just moments, eat your face.”
I went to the company’s website and placed an order for some harvester ants, which apparently are ideal for the farm. (They have experience in tractor repair, I guess.)
Each day, Parker would ask if his ants had come, which was the occasion for a valuable lesson. My wife, showing her wisdom, said, “Next time you order something for Parker, don’t tell him about it until he gets here.” Turns out, children have very little concept of time, and even less concept of priority mail. Every morning, he and I would go out to get the paper, and he would sprint to the mailbox to see if his ants had arrived. “Parker,” I would say, “the mail doesn’t come overnight.” “But they’re bringing my ants, so they might,” he would say. Sigh.
Eventually, the ants came. Fortunately, I was able to get to the mailbox before Parker knew they were there, because when I opened the package I found a lovely tube filled with very still ants. I gave them a little shake, thinking they were perhaps asleep. It then occurred to me that I don’t know whether or not ants sleep. Closer inspection revealed that these ants were way past sleeping.
So at this point I was in a pickle. Parker knew his ants were coming any day now, but I didn’t want to let him know that they arrived dead. It isn’t that he would be upset, but rather that he would opt for carrying around the dead animals. Remember, this is the kid who, for several days, toted around a dead beetle that he had named Hoo-Hoo Lava Jam Jesus.
In the package was a slip of paper that told you what to do if the ants arrived dead. I sent an e-mail, and they responded a short while later to inform me a new batch of ants was on its way.
After another week of waiting (and checking for surprise overnight postal service deliveries), the package finally arrived. Of course, the arrival also caused my wife to whip the package Frisbee-style into the neighbor’s yard. Apparently, during shipping, the tube that the ants were in got crushed, setting them free to scurry about the cardboard box. So when my wife opened the package, the ants came marching one by one, hurrah!
When my wife called me, she made it clear that she was not pleased. I told her to go get the envelope of free-range ants and place them in a container for when I got home. “No,” she said.
“Just pick up the envelope by the corner and put them in a container,” I said in my most assuring voice.
“No,” she said.
I told her there was a storage bin in the garage that was large, and she could just pitch them in their and I would deal with it when I got home. She made it clear that, should one of the ants bite her, I would receive swift and certain retribution for forcing her to pick up an envelope covered in angry ants.
When I got home, the ants were in their storage bin. Somehow, my wife had been able to conduct the whole ant recovery mission without Parker knowing what was going on, so he had yet to see his brand new ants. I opened the bin and found that a whopping six ants had survived the journey. I assume that the trip killed them again, although a 30-foot toss to the neighbor’s yard probably didn’t help.
So I carefully moved the six remaining ants to their new habitat, which Parker has found wildly entertaining. (He insists they have breakfast with him each morning.) His sister is less than excited, and woke up the first night we had the ants saying she had dreams that the ants had gotten out and were in her bed. Perhaps Daddy should not have been playing the “ants are crawling up your back” game with Allie during dinner.
So we are now waiting for yet another order of ants. Hopefully, these will arrive soon. Alive. And contained. Parker and I will continue to dutifully check the mailbox until they arrive. But they need to get here quick, because Parker is getting... wait for it... antsy.