Updates on school and ants

I have now completed three days of teaching, and I have yet to meet with all five classes in a single day. Although tomorrow looks likely to change that string. The kids are wonderful, and I enjoy my time in the classroom, but I really don't enjoy the chunk that this cuts out of each day.

One interesting aspect is that they are giving me a ride home in a school bus (minivan) along with a bunch of the students. Rank hath its privileges, so at least I get to ride in the front seat. As a consequence, I have seen parts of Cuenca that I had not seen before. Although it is not surprising, there are places in Cuenca that I would not be willing to live. I have not taken any pictures of them yet, but they are there.

On another note, when I got up yesterday morning and went in the kitchen, I noticed what at first glance appeared to be a streak of dirt on the floor about an inch wide. As I looked more closely, I realized that it was moving, and that realization was quickly followed by recognition: ANTS

They are tiny, not much more than 3 mm long, and perhaps half a mm wide, but there were thousands, TENS of thousands of them. They had formed three highways, two minor ones, perhaps 4-6 lanes wide, that followed the baseboard along the edges of the living room, and the multi-lane interstate that cut right through the middle. They weren't actually following lanes, but if they had been, I would guess that the one through the middle would have been at least 12 lanes wide. The source was outside the front door in the dirt, and the destination was our trash can in the kitchen. The can was touching the wall, and the combined highways met and traveled up the wall and into the trash. The total distance from their apparent den to our trash was about 25 feet by the shortest path.

I quickly realized that routine tactics were pointless, so I went next door and borrowed their vacuum cleaner. Not worrying about occasional wanderers, I plugged it in and started on the superhighway, followed by the smaller tracks along the walls. I then moved the trash can and sucked up all the ants on the wall and sealed up the garbage sack and took it out for disposal. I then came back and used the vacuum again to mop up the backup squad that hadn't heard that the party was over.

We still have a dozen or two ants roaming our kitchen at any given time, but the trash is no longer an attraction to them, or at least not an accessible one. We are careful not to leave it touching the wall, and apparently the plastic trash can is difficult to climb, to say nothing of the plastic bag that lines the inside. I have read that most small ants like this that infest homes on occasion seek either sugar or protein. Given that these were apparently after our left-over chicken scraps, plus the fact that occasional small bits of sugar don't appear to interest them greatly, I assume that these crave protein. They do not sting, but still, finding masses of them in our kitchen was a shock. We will be more careful hereafter with our scraps.

Given the shock of the moment, I did not take any pictures, and I hope that I don't have any occasion hereafter to do so. So I hope that my verbal description will take the place of pictures this time.