Midden

As happy as I was to get back to California on Thursday, I was a little afraid to go home. Or at least, to go into my bathroom once I got home. Recall my ant problem. Amazingly, there weren't many ants! I guess I'd sufficiently coated all food residue with a soap film to discourage them. There were a few ants scouting around, but nowhere near the hordes I'd left. Just so you aren't grossed out by my bathroom, I did eventually break down and clean up all the corpses.

What's strange is that the few ants that lingered in my bathroom seemed to prefer hanging out around the bathtub. This was a little annoying when I took my post-ballet bubble bath. Dirty little voyeurs! Needless to say, their act has been cleaned up =P. Yep. I entombed them in bubbles. There were only a few of them, however, and I'm lazy, so I left their twisted remains on the rim of the tub. So I was very happy to return home after my midterm yesterday and see that their earthly remains have been removed! The explanation for this was relatively apparent. A couple of survivors were laboring off with their fallen comrades. Cool!

I wonder why they did that. I mean, I know that ants are relatively tidy animals. They clean the trash, including corpses, from their nests, forming a large rubbish pile, or midden, near the nest entrance. But why should an ant colony clean up after itself outside of its nest, in my bathroom? Any ideas? I sure hope they haven't started to consider my bathroom as a part of their nest!