Spring Colors and The Battle of The Bugs

I've brightened up the master bedroom a bit with a colorful quilt...neat bargain find from Overstock - already looks vintage and well loved. Now we're colorful inside and out.

Myrtle likes it...

Today was another beautiful day. The weather was cloudy in the morning, but sunny and warm (79) in the afternoon. I sat in the driveway in an attempt to get close enough to Shade (one of the feral kitties I trapped as a kitten years ago...) to apply some Advantage between her shoulder blades. I have no hope of getting that close to her brother, Oscar, anymore; he's reverted back to his feral ways and I only catch an occasional glimpse of him at night when he comes into the garage to eat.

As I was biding my time, I watched some ants excavating dirt from a crack in the driveway - gotta wonder what they're building under there. I believe they were Florida carpenter ants, but I'm not an ant expert so they could be another variety.

I enjoyed watching them, noticing that they appear to have similar tendencies to human workers in their approach to their jobs. They were all the same size (~1/4"). Some carried a relatively large glob of dirt, while others appeared to carry only a single grain.

The ones with the large globs carried them 6-7" away from the crack and moved very quickly along the way to and from the crack. They were the 'happy worker ants', which appear to be thinking happy ant thoughts like "Whoo hoo! Gotta get this glob of dirt WAY far away from the crack and hurry back to get another glob! Whoo hoo! I love my job!"

Then there were the 'slacker ants'. They're the ones carrying no more than one grain of dirt at a time, and they don't even bother to come all the way out of the crack - they just poke their heads out of the top and dump their little load right there at the opening. They move much more slowly than the 'happy worker ants' and appear to be thinking things like "Good god, how much longer do I have to haul this stupid dirt out of this crack, I hate this job." Such is ant life.

Shade's curiosity got the better of her and she came over to see what I was watching, since it wasn't her anymore. I got in a quick petting session and then snuck the Advantage on her while she was watching Tigger lounging in the grass. All the critters, except for Oscar, got their first dose of flea poison (I've tried all the 'natural' stuff and it DOESN'T WORK) for the season. Let the bugs begin...