Friday, September 21, 2012

Give De Ants De Air

In a previous post, I detailed my exciting experience when I tried to open the top of our ant farm.  Several ants escaped and I had to squash them.  It was mildly traumatic.

That was a couple of weeks ago. The ant farm instructions said to open it briefly every week to give them fresh air.  My friend Sarah suggested putting the ant farm in the refrigerator to make the ants sluggish.  That is a great idea, but the remaining living ants kept hanging out RIGHT at the top of the ant farm and even if they were sluggish, I was afraid they might escape.

A few days ago, Kevin started cracking me up by intoning solemnly and repeatedly, "You got what you want.  Give de ants de air." which is a parody of a quote from the movie Total Recall when some bad guys cut off air from one section of the Martian Colony.  Kevin does a pretty good job of copying Arnold Schwarzenneger's Austrian accent.

It made me laugh, but it also made me feel vaguely guilty. I was afraid to open the top, but were they suffocating?  Poor ants!

So 2 days ago, I was peering at the farm dubiously and noticed that the ants were congregated at one end of the top.  Could I crack open the other end and let some air in?

No.  The whole top came off.

BUT, amazingly, the ants were so startled (or were too busy enjoying the oxygen) to do anything crazy. I got the top back on quickly and no ants escaped or were squashed.  Oh joy!

So for now, we have happy ants and a happy Laraba.  By next week they may all be dead as they are dying off.  Ants don't live that long.

As a total aside, I do NOT recommend the movie Total Recall.  I had seen it a couple of times 20 years ago and remembered it with fondness.  We acquired it recently and sat down to watch it together and wow, I gave up after about 45 minutes! It is VIOLENT.  The language is BAD.  UGH!  It is a movie with an interesting premise but it is over the top in a couple of areas.

I'm much more careful about what movies and TV I watch and have been for more than a decade, and my spirit is much more sensitive. I think that is a good thing. I don't want to get used to excessive violence or rotten language.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

I can't wait to get our ants. I've never seen Total Recall but I like the movies Tremors - but man o man the language I hate it. So I can understand, I wish Netflix would play the edited version or that we could get that one device that edits out the bad words. Tremors isn't so much violent but it does have big worms called graboids that eat things and people it's more action than violent, does that make sense?