OT Slightly amusing/stressful moment

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-13-2006
OT Slightly amusing/stressful moment
8
Mon, 03-03-2008 - 9:30pm

When people think of being parents, I don't think they imagine situations like this one that I just had. I'm just dying to tell someone.

The Christmas before last, my mother got the boys one of those ant farms that uses gel instead of sand. I FINALLY got around to ordering the ants, and they arrived today. So, we got the thing all set up and put the ants in. There are warnings everywhere to not touch the ants because they sting. Well, I was watching the ants later on, when the boys were busy doing something else. Two of them were dead! I watched them for a long time, and sure enough, they were dead. They must have gotten over-stressed in transit. So I carefully opened the lid to get the dead ones out with tweezers. I made sure none of them were near the top, but one ant came running up at breakneck speed, and out of the habitat. I quickly replaced the lid so no more would get out, and the escaped ant was gone! OMG! A big, stinging ant loose in my children's bedroom! At last, I spotted the ant, and tried to get it to crawl onto a piece of paper, but it was moving really fast up toward my hand, so I quickly tried to smash it. I'm not a bug-killer, and I'm certainly not a pet-killer, but I was kind of in panic mode. LOL! Well, the darn thing was just moving around too fast, and I knew I couldn't open their little habitat, for fear of letting more of the little buggers loose. So I carried it (on the piece of paper) to the sink and tried to drown it, feeling like a wretched coward. I mean me feeling like a coward. The ant was doing just fine. Did you know that a Harvester Ant can remain submerged practically forever and not die? I don't know if it was suffering, but there I was, trying to drown my children's pet, and feeling like, OMG! I can't get it out of the water and open up its habitat or I'll get stung! So I scooped it up in a Dixie cup and tried to squash it. Harvester ants are made of steel! Finally, I flushed it. Ugh! That was about half an hour ago, and I bet it's still alive in the sewer system! I'll probably have nightmares about it finding its way back to our toilet.

The good thing is that there were approximately 25 ants to begin with, and we never counted them, so no one will notice one missing. I can't tell any of this to my kids. David was adamant that I NEVER open the habitat.

As for the two dead ones...they were just faking it!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-28-2007
Mon, 03-03-2008 - 9:45pm

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!

Holy God, I am snarfing my beer again........

LOL Dee

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-28-2006
Mon, 03-03-2008 - 10:23pm

LMAO I am cracking up over hear!

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 03-04-2008 - 12:19am

OMG that is priceless.

Thanks for the laugh.

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Registered: 08-27-2007
Tue, 03-04-2008 - 12:20am

That is the funniest thing I heard all day !!!


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Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 03-04-2008 - 7:45am

ROFLOL! that is too funny!

Weston had that kind of ant farm. It took 9 months to get the ants, then only 3 were alive when they got here, and he did something weird to the gel and they were never able to borrow into it. (I think he opened it before the ants came so it dried out). Then mold grew rampant in the gel.... (I think he added water-- true science experiment)

I slowly moved it out of the family room into the kitchen and then slowly into the pantry (and into the garbage) so that he wouldn't realize I was throwing it out until after it wasn't part of our normal landscape anymore. He asked about it 2 weeks after I threw it out. I said the mold got to be too much and we just couldn't have that growing in our house.

Betsy

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Registered: 06-25-2003
Tue, 03-04-2008 - 9:09am

OMG Evelyn, that is hilarious! I had visions of you chasing an ant around the bedroom, and I was crying with laughter.

I was also thanking my stars that I *didn't* buy that gel ant farm that had taken my eye a few weeks ago. I had been thinking it woudl be a good learning process for Peter, but I just know that either he or Siobhan will take the lid off (or a cat will knock it over) and that will be that...

-Paula

-Paula

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-07-2003
Tue, 03-04-2008 - 9:23am
My kids and I got a big laugh out of this, especially 'cus we just got done reading an old Scholastic Book called "Chocolate Covered Ants" that has some ant farm mishaps in it. (FYI, in the book, they're told to only open the ant farm over a tub or sink in case any ants get loose.) Thanks for the laugh this morning!
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Registered: 01-07-2008
Tue, 03-04-2008 - 9:33am

That's really funny!


We had one of those ant farms too. It was really interesting watching them burrow and make tunnels and things. The really spooky thing was that eventually the ants did all die, *but we never saw any bodies*. I don't know if they were eating them, or escaping somehow, or being reabsorbed into the gel, but one by one they just 'disappeared'. Eeek. Or maybe Euan was scooping them out to experiment on them unbeknownst to us (in which case, unbeknownst is how it is going to stay - we've since moved out of that house so I don't want to think about where the bodies might be LOL!!)


Kirsty, mum to Euan (9, Asperger's) Rohan (5, NT) and Maeve (2, NT)


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