Ants are industrious creatures. They toil from sunup to
sundown, and perhaps afterwards too, but I usually sleep at night and don’t
notice what they do. I thought they would never do anything other than work, with
the exception of the queen, who has other things on its mind. So what happened
in my house surprised me no end.
All was well, until one day I found ants running along one
of the walls of the second bedroom. There were so many of them. They were going
in both directions. This was a cause for concern. They were probably raiding
the larder. So I followed them. They went under the door into the hall. At the
end of the wall, they turned along the adjacent wall, and again when they
reached its end. Here they climbed up to reach the ceiling, turned through 90
degrees to reach the third wall. They reached the fluorescent tube light. There
the line stayed a while and turned back to retrace its route. I traced it the
other way. It reached the second bedroom, and finally climbed up the cot. It
stopped at a nonspecific spot and turned back again. All the ants kept doing
this. They were still doing it when I reached home after a day’s work. None
carried any food. There was no place to sleep. There was no water source to
take a drink. I have shown their route in the following picture.
“What do you think they are doing?” I asked my wife, after
explaining all this to her.
“God knows. Perhaps they expect to find the larder en route”
she said. “Let us get rid of them, or they might find the larder eventually.”
So I got rid of them. I think getting rid of ants is legal,
and no PETA activists should be at my doorstep protesting.
The next day a new batch of them was at it again, this time
visiting the remaining rooms. The route is as shown below. Even this time there
was no connection to their colony. They were like gypsies, on the go at all
times.
I got rid of the whole lot the second time. A week later
they repeated the feat, along different walls in the same rooms. I got rid of
them too. They have not returned to do something like this since then.
“I don’t think they were looking for food” I told my wife. “That
is done by scouts which move randomly here and there. This was organized march.”
“So what is your explanation?” she asked me.
“I
think they were doing brisk walk as a cardio” I said. She gave me a look and
went back to whatever she was doing.
