Ants

Never underestimate the intelligence of ants.

In the summer, when there is abundant food to be found in the wild, ants may be disinclined to invade our homes. Picnics are another matter. I mean, if we are going to spread food out in the open within marching distance of a nest of ants, we have only ourselves to blame.

It is a source of amazement to me that, in the wintertime, ants from the outside are able to make a bee-line (please excuse the metaphor) for sweet things inside the house.

Like today, for instance.

I took down from the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard a tin can (actually a former cookie container) in which I keep a stash of chocolates. Mostly the chocolates are in the form of bars, acquired at various times, but there are also the individual foil-wrapped chocolates, including some that the cabin steward on our last cruise had neatly placed on our pillows each night.

It has been said by those who study such things that a chocolate a day, especially a dark chocolate, is good for you. (Or maybe, sometimes, two.) I subscribe enthusiastically to that view. My daily chocolate is something I look forward to with keen anticipation.

Well, today, the ants invaded my tin can. They were not yet there in force, thank heaven. The ones that made it in were probably the scouts, the outriders whose job it is in the tightly-organized bureaucracy of anthood to find new sources of food, especially the high-energy sugary stuff. They had found my stash. How did they know it was there? And how did they get past all the obstacles to reach the inside of the can, which, though it was not airtight, had scant space even for an ant to penetrate?

The triangular cardboard box of the bar of Toblerone had been opened (probably by myself) and the foil had been carelessly, and hastily, folded back. There they were. A score or more of the little creatures, madly scurrying around upon being discovered. Some even ran up my arm.

These scout ants move faster than the worker ants who will follow later. Had I not chanced upon the invasion, I am convinced that the entire stash of chocolates would have been covered by a teeming horde of worker ants by the afternoon, each one of them carting off a tiny piece of chocolate to take back to the old queen in the hive.

My chocolate stash is now kept in ziploc plastic bags inside a plastic jar with a screw-on lid. I think the chocolates will be safe there. I have a feeling that the ants, intelligent though they are, have not yet been able to figure out a way to penetrate plastic. At least, I hope they have not. But, with evolution, who knows what the future holds.