Ennui

The recent level of activity in the Queendom of the ants is best measured by the number of taps on the glass from my regular visitors and their whinges of "why aren't they doing anything?". Since the last post they have managed three little tunnels, creating a ladder in the centre and a swooping, weedy thing on the right-hand side.

Most of the group have started a love-in at the far left corner, where they nibble the agar and nuzzle each other.


Occasionally the more adventurous among them (Boothby Graffoe, Gertrude and Adam come to mind) wander off to attempt to scale the walls or chew pointlessly at the floor.



In this state of boredom, Antoinette has gone bananas and is dementedly chewing the rubber seal off from the inside. It's really tough stuff and quite hard to remove with a fingernail - her insanity must lend her super-formican strength. She's actually balancing on one leg to do it.


I have had suggestions of things to do to stimulate them (and am protecting them as best I can from the glass tappers, with my trademark self-righteous indignation) which have included cockroach vs ants deathmatch and making casts of the tunnels with molten lead. These I have dismissed with a raised eyebrow (the right eyebrow, the other one doesn't move independently) and I'm trying to find somewhere to buy grass-seed in less than entire lawn quantities so that the Harvesters actually have something to harvest. That should keep them amused, perhaps enough so that they'll stop their unseemly, day-long fondling. Any additional suggestions, please comment below, Tally's getting tired of Tweetspawn's attention.

And now for something completely...similar.

When did I become an Antblogger? A Myrmepistolarist? A Formicadiarist? Oh well, won't be for much longer given the events of today.

But that's me dwelling in self-pity, here we go with news of the 24.

There have been massive weekend excavations, mostly vertically, around the walls and underneath. There are one or two connecting tunnels, but these are straight up and down, no nonsense, let's-see-where-this-one-comes-out ladies.

Today I saw Carlotta poo, though failed to catch it on film. It involved quite a lot of stillness and contemplation on her part, then a subtle brown staining of a little agar block. Very civilised.

The winning name for the final ant with no name (I'd have called her Sin Nombre after my favourite virus - there's poetry in that name) is MonsterDong. There had to be one with a rude name, thanks Rich. Not sure about the spacing and capitalisation, it makes her sound a little like a brand, but nevertheless there she is.

Finally, I managed to catch them at the beginning, middle and end of a tunnel this afternoon.

Dig my pretties!



You may notice that I've done something bad and purloined music from my collection. I will of course remove, distroy and disable on request (and beg on my knees for forgiveness) - but the tracks concerned are from Johnny Flynn's fantastic album A Larum (Fabulist have a post with him singing with Laura Marling - it's lovely), Yann Tiersen's wonderful Amelie soundtrack, and Kyle Gabler's soundtrack to The World of Goo (one of the best game soundtracks I've ever heard), which he is giving away free here. I should also acknowledge the shadows of Liel and Nicole, which is why this sometimes turns green. They like ants.

This is why I'm not allowed pets...

Some caveats:

1. We spent a stereotypical sleepless weekend in Seattle
2. I've got too much to do
3. My left frontal sinus decided to explode during the descent as we came back into San Francisco and I'm on a cocktail of decongestants, antibiotics, painkillers and steroids that makes me feel a little odd

None of which really excuses the bad news (which I shall start with). Make sure you're sitting down it's a shocker. Squish D, in a tragic case of nominative determinism, got squashed.

The ants had been incredibly busy over the weekend, there are multiple new tunnels which are mainly vertical, but there are complicated interconnections around the edges and the rubble that's been removed has been carefully added to the top to make another area for digging. This means that the distance between the ants and the lid has been decreased, to the extent that Marduk T-shirt Men's Room Incident spends most of her time chewing on the rubber seal.

Once a week you're supposed to let a bit of air into the habitat, there are little airholes in the top (just the two, about large enough to slip the end of a paper-clip into) but I decided to open it a crack to get a proper influx of fresh air. About five of the industrious ladies were waving at the lid and I tapped them down beforehand. Levering up the lid, I failed to notice Squish D clinging to the underside and as I immediately replaced it she became trapped (avert your eyes for a grisly detail) with a sickening crunch between the seal and the walls. RIP Squish D. Actually RIBB (Rest in Biohazard Bin).

As if I didn't feel guilty enough, the rest of the colony became avenging Valkyries, and swarmed to the precise area, wondering where Squish D could have gone to and vowing vengeance on her thick-fingered, idiot nemesis (below).



I feel a bit overcome. I'll leave the good news for a separate post and leave this one to the memory of the short-lived Squish D. She was personally responsible for renewing the interest in Keith's tunnel and her star shone so brightly before its tragic quenching between two pieces of perspex. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, goodbye.

PS

If this nominative determinism thing holds true, I'm quite concerned for Splodey.

Day Two: 20 Feet Short

They weren't supposed to start tunneling for 24-48 hours, but about 16 hours later, they've excavated one entire side of the blue-agar stuff down to the bottom and created a U-shaped tube back to the surface. The excised chunks of agar have been distributed across most of the surface, but particularly at the sides, building climbing walls up the perspex. I put the early tunneling start down to the fact that my ants are special, early developers. They're better than other people's ants. Oh yes. That and the lab is boiling hot at the moment as the air conditioning's gone again so they're a lot more active.

I say most of the surface for the bricks, that's because they've left a clear patch near the exit of the tunnel where they gather for rest breaks when they're not on digging duty. The agar acts both as food stuff and tunneling substrate and during the rests they nibble at it slightly and seem to be supping. They aren't eating the big chunks that they break off.


You can see the entrance to the hole from above just south of Bertwhistle's derriere in the above shot. You can also see that they have little concept of personal space, a little like passengers on the Number 30 bus in SF (see here for number 30 adventures), and that Splodey seems to be grooming Flip whilst Tweetspawn does Boothby Graffoe. I've a feeling Tally's under there somewhere too. Between a third and two thirds of them seem to be resting at any one time with quite regular change overs.

After lunch, they aborted a second tunneling project that was starting in the opposite corner, leaving Keith dejectedly licking condensation off the wall:


And instead they plumped for a new tunnel (under the direction of Margot) starting alongside the first - I've not perfected the transfer of video from camera to web yet, and I've lost a lot of resolution going via iphoto, imovie 08 (clunky) and finally to youtube, I'll see if I can improve on the below, but here they are, hard at work. And so am I in the background. I must stop biting my nails.

Aaargh! Youtube's down for maintenance. OK - let's try this another way.




It's like ant therapy to watch them - and I should probably start charging given the number of visitors I'm attracting! You can watch them remove the blocks in two directions, up the left hand side and out of view, or up the u-shaped tunnel on the other side of the agar. More on Monday as away for a short while, all I hope is that they don't die over the weekend!

Introducing

To express how giddy with excitement I am. My Harvester Ants arrived in the post this morning in a little tube (arty out of focus shot below). I think they're Red Harvesters (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) and they're brilliant.


They apparently bite and sting, so in order to transfer them I popped them in the fridge for 10 minutes to cool them down. At which point they were lethargic enough to get into their gel-matrix habitat - the moment of transfer below.


Sadly, four of the little fellas, pardon me, ladies were dead on arrival, but there are still 25 of their nestmates nibbling at the surace of the matrix, freshening up after their postage. Introducing: Yolanda, Madlenka, Nigella, Margot, Splodey, Carlotta, Oswald, Tally, Minus - Warrior Queen of the Ant People, Marduk T-shirt Men's Room Incdient, Antoinette, Flip, Humdiggler, Boothby Graffoe, Tweetspawn, Sickof, Keith, Bertwhistle, Gertrude, Adam, Cuddles, Squash D, Squish D and Omar. Except for Yolanda and Nigella, who are collaborating on escape plans.


You can expect detailed updates, and if I manage it, maybe even live video. Oh yes. You may have noticed that there are only 24 names there. Leave your suggestions in comments and I'll pick a favourite for the final ant. I love this. I'm thrilled!

I Loves a Challenge

I just received an email update about Routes from Matt Blacker- apparently a new page of DNA has been uploaded to the case file by the Police in Calca. Using the same method as before I've just translated it and here's what I got:

N E E D I D E N T I T Y G F E K P L G R E R F I G P R E Stop T I M I N G S S T I L L I N Q P E S T I G N Stop D I S E A S E S P R E A D I N Q P E S T I G N Stop P R G G F V I A H G S P I T A L R E Q P I R E S C A S E A N D P G L I C E C G G P E R A T I G N Stop

Need identity of Ekulorer figure
Timings still in question
Disease spread in question
Proof via hospital requires case and police cooperation

P has been substituted for U and G for O as neither of these two letters are in the Protein sequence. The critical part that I've completely mangled is "need identity of Ekulorer figure". Nonsense. But of course, P occasionally also needs to be P, and not always U, so we have "Ekplorer figure", or even better, because K looks like an X as much as G looks like an O: "Explorer figure".

Taking that new info back to the original code we got last week it clears things up a little bit.

S T G R Y N E E D S L E G A L C L E A R A N C E Stop P R I E S G L I C I T G X L D N

Story needs legal clearance
Urie Solicito(r) LDN

It's the story (the one that Schoenberg had for Matt) that needs legal clearance, not a stingray after all. There's me hoping for submarines and Aqua Marina. Perhaps Schoenberg had already contacted the solicitor in London (that's how I'm interpreting the second sentence) and he has more information on, or even a copy of the story? According to the updated code he's called Urie. Hmm. Urie? Prie? I'm not quite satisfied with that bit.

So what's going on? I think a couple of things need to be done:

1. Identify the explorer figure
2. Get the case from the hospital concerning the disease mentioned (that sounds worrying)
3. Contact this solicitor Urie (depending on how much you trust my translation) and try and find out what the story was.

Though I'm going to take time for a moments reflection below. She's irrelavent to this post, but lovely. And she's got her own theme tune.