Ants on the Move

As my friends and family can attest it takes a lot to gross me out.  Well tonight it almost happened.  I was torn between being fascinated and grossed at the same time.  Luckily fascination won. Donna was over and we were working on our clay project and as she was leaving she discovered a parade of ants marching across the sidewalk.  As it happened Hormelis the gardener was walking past with his flashlight and what we discovered was incredible.

What I am talking about is not hundreds of ants, not thousands of ants, not even tens of thousands of ants but rather hundreds of thousands of ants.  99% of which were going in one direction.  Hormelis followed the trail back from the lot beside us, across the cement retaining wall that spans our yard, across the grass, through a flowerbed, down the wall, through the ditch, across the road and into a lot on the other side of the road.  All marching in a column about an inch and a half wide.  It was BIZARRE!

Hormelis noticed that some were carrying grass seeds from the lot across the road and he says that type of grass is not found on the lot were they ended up so I am guessing that they had just made a trip out for growlies.

Pouring across the retaining wall the width of the yard

across the grass and through the flowerbed

down the wall and across the ditch

marching across the road from the lot on the other side.

We took a video so you can see how fast they were moving

As an addendum to this post from last night, Hormelis located the ant nest today and hopefully burned them out depending on how far below the ground they were burrowed in.  If he didn't get to the heart of the nest he decimated the population as this pile of brush was full of them.