I have two ants safely harbored in a peanut butter jar, a piece of screen keeping them inside.\u00a0 They came here inside my husband’s lunchbox from\u00a0the construction site.\u00a0 Of course, they didn’t come on purpose.\u00a0 They weren’t particularly interested in visiting places far, far away.\u00a0 They were after goodies and got hijacked by the lid being closed and zippered shut.\u00a0 So home they came…surviving what had to be a very dangerous and uncomfortable trip, jostled between empty lunch containers, locked inside a plastic and nylon environment in 100 degree heat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So hubs opens lunch box to dump his containers into the sink and does the old, “Ants! Oh, great.”<\/p>\n
Now, I have a “thing” about ants.\u00a0 It’s the one creature…en masse…which will send me screaming off in\u00a0a\u00a0frothing\u00a0panic. (I was bitten by red ants when I was a child and have never quite recovered from the experience.)\u00a0 But I also have a “thing” about life and its being\u00a0precious.\u00a0 I have a “thing” which demands me respect all life…and non-life.\u00a0 And, me, a human, has the power to help.\u00a0 And that’s what it comes down to,\u00a0doesn’t it?\u00a0 If I have the power to help, doesn’t that obligate me to help where I can, when I can?\u00a0 I think so.\u00a0\u00a0Caring matters.\u00a0 If one doesn’t\u00a0care, if\u00a0things don’t matter, what’s the point?<\/p>\n
So back to the story.<\/p>\n
So, lid open, one of the two ants trapped inside started perambulating around in a bit of a frenzy.\u00a0 One got outside the box and disappeared.\u00a0 The other was just doing laps inside.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I see all manner of containers, but everything is plastic or styrofoam — death to insects put inside because they are saturated with things like pesticides or made using formaldehyde. (Nice to think that our food comes in these things, right?)<\/em> Quickly, I grab the clean, empty, glass peanut butter jar, wondering where the “outside” ant went off to, and how I would be able to find her to get her safely inside the jar for the return trip home tomorrow.\u00a0 Ah!\u00a0 There she is!\u00a0 I manage to get her to walk inside the jar.\u00a0 Now for the other one.\u00a0 She’s not so easy, but, with the help of a piece of paper towel, she’s induced to take a ride inside safety.<\/p>\n Screen lid anchored in place, and they are ready to roll, no longer “lost ants,” but simply on an adventure and ready for the return trip home.<\/p>\n I used my power to help.\u00a0<\/p>\n BELATED ANT UPDATE:<\/p>\n Yes, they made it safely back to their ant homes.\u00a0 Hubs was very conscientious about getting them back to exactly where he\u00a0ate lunch the day before.\u00a0 And he watched them as they\u00a0made tracks out of the jar and\u00a0onto “familiar ground.”\u00a0 They immediately ran into more ants, did the\u00a0“feeler thing,” as he called it, then made tracks, following other ants headed to a “known ant home.”\u00a0<\/p>\n I really like the construction crew.\u00a0 They are very conscientious.\u00a0 All of them.\u00a0 And that’s as it should be since\u00a0the two owners, Hubs and partner, are both\u00a0eco-minded.\u00a0 If the crew wasn’t, I guess they wouldn’t be crew very long, right?<\/p>\n Oh, and, I failed to mention, I put a bit of water on aforementioned paper towel the morning of transport back home, and both ants made quite an elaborate show of drinking.\u00a0 Those were some thirsty ants.\u00a0 They must have snacked on some of\u00a0hubby’s favorite\u00a0Triscuits!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have two ants safely harbored in a peanut butter jar, a piece of screen keeping them inside.\u00a0 They came here inside my husband’s lunchbox from\u00a0the construction site.\u00a0 Of course, they didn’t come on purpose.\u00a0 They weren’t particularly interested in visiting places far, far away.\u00a0 They were after goodies and got hijacked by the lid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,11,6,12],"tags":[23,24,26,27,28,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3839,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/3839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}