For anyone who has been visiting this blog since its origin back on August 2nd, you may be wondering what happened to the ants. After all, this originally was about my ant habitat, and the life of the ants, their tunnels, and their habits. For a couple of weeks, I wrote frequently about the progress and, sometimes, lack of progress of my Harvester Ants. I took pictures of them, daily at one point, as their tunnels seemed to grow over night, except I knew they were constantly at work to create them. I observed them taking what seemed to be naps or breaks from time to time, and was thrilled to discover that they actually had a favorite place to sleep at night in a large communal area that I named the sanctuary of safety.
After school began in the middle of August, my time spent researching and surfing the net declined as other areas of interest, namely planning, scheduling, preparing materials for lessons, and perusing resources for lesson ideas and plans, took more of my time. It's not that I lost interest in the ants, but they fell into a lower level of importance in my life, I am ashamed to admit.
I check on them every day. I open the habitat each morning and let air into it. Lately, most of the ants are to be found at the top of the habitat, hardly moving at all. Not dead or asleep, but moving without purpose. This morning when I opened the ant habitat, I kept it open for nearly a minute and not one ant tried to escape. There seemed to be no interest in escaping, unlike the ants they were when I first got them... speedily racing to the surface the moment they felt the fresh air enter their tunnels.
No, these ants are no longer lively, no longer digging tunnels, no longer interested in doing anything, it seems. Even the ants which have died in the tunnels do not receive their proper carrying to the surface as the ones which died in the earlier days. In fact, yesterday I noticed two curled up dead ants, one at the surface and one in a tunnel. Today, the one at the surface was in pieces, spread out over the blue gel mounds near the tunnel openings. I wondered if the ants had torn it up because it was something to do, or because they needed it to be in pieces for burial, or maybe they ate it? My ants are cannibals? I don't know.
I can only surmise that the life they have had in the small and limited confines of this wonderful blue gel, invented for the NASA spaceflight that took place about two years ago, is not the most desirable of habitats for a life form as sophisticated as the ant, especially a species most noted for their tunneling. The joy and excitement I felt during those first two weeks of observing the ants has most definitely plummeted, and now, each morning when I check on them, I am reminded that I kept them trapped all this time. I find no relief in knowing that they were caught and trapped prior to my picking them up, and if I hadn't bought them for my own studies and observation, someone else would have.
This I have learned about myself: although I enjoy reading about life and living things on the earth, in the sky, or beneath the sea, I would never have made a good biologist. I don't enjoy keeping the animals in confinement. I understand that it's easier to observe an animal when you can control its meanderings, keep it close by for the convenience of the observations, but here's what I know to be true:
I would rather study the ant, beetle, cicada, bee, spider, preying mantis, or whatever insect crosses under or over my path at the time it crosses my path, and at the place at which our paths cross. There will be no more capturing of living animals in my classroom, no more holding them in an unnatural environment for my own curiosity. Even if it could be used as a teaching tool. I will leave this area of studies to other teachers more inclined and less affected.
I should have known, before I even bought the ant habitat, that this was not something I could follow through to the end without feeling. Now, it is a matter of waiting for the imprisoned harvester ants to die. They can never be released. They are non-native to this area. I am reminded of a ninth grade frog dissection in which I found myself wanting to participate but unable to do the deed which was required of me. I could not pierce the brain of a living, breathing, kicking, squirming frog. Oh, I tried. But I could not bring myself to do it. I had to remain a passive, note-taking observer while another student pierced its brain. I felt sick about it afterward. Even as the frog was dissected, its heart beat. Being told it felt no pain did not lessen my guilt in the process. It seemed immoral to me.
Each day I look upon "my ants" and wonder why they continue to live. The book that came with the habitat said they would probably live a few weeks, possibly a month. It's been almost two months, and they are still living, yet not alive. Not thriving nor bustling. I ask myself if I should let them continue to live miserably in this unnatural environment until they die off one by one, or end it quickly and mercifully in the freezer?
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