Important Life Skills: How to Build an Ant Bridge

I've learned many things here in Colombia.  Perhaps one of the most important is ant management.  Well, learned might be too strong of a word here as I am sort of failing miserably at managing them.  But you know, working on it.

A few days ago I came home absolutely exhausted.  I had been up until midnight on the phone with a friend the night before, sharing sob stories about boys.  You know how everyone always says there are plenty of fish in the sea?  This is absolutely true.  However, I am amassing an Everest sized mountain of evidence that a large majority of the fish have mercury poisoning.  I need to find a biologist willing to look into this.  I'm fairly certain it is reaching epidemic proportions.

But I digress.  Back to the ants.

Exhausted, all I wanted to do was go to bed early.  It was nearing bedtime and I was sitting on my bed transferring some files from my old computer to my new one using an external hard drive.  I kept having to flick little ants off me.  This is certainly not an unusual occurrence here in Colombia, but they were particularly pesky that night.  I ran through the last couple days in my head.  Had I eaten anything in my bed?  Oh, right.  I had just finished eating ten mini Reeces Peanut Butter Cups.  But COME ON!!!  I had been really extremely careful not to drop a single crumb of chocolate or peanut buttery goodness onto my bed.  And even if I had, did they really swarm up to my bed that quickly!?  And then I saw it.  They were swarming out of my hard drive.

I quickly moved my computer and hard drive to my floor.  If I was about to have another ant fiasco it was not going to happen in my bed again!

A google search was educational.   There are certain types of ants that love electronics.  Scientists aren't sure why.  Maybe something about the electricity?  Or the heat?  One of these electronic loving types showed up in Texas a few years back and was responsible for nearly half of all calls for air conditioner repairs.  Russia even called NASA in Houston, concerned about the safety of the international space station if the ants got into NASA's electronics equipment.  These ants are the same kind that live in Costa Rica and of course Colombia. 

Further research turned up suggested solutions to computer ants.  Put your electronic devise into an airtight container and pump it full of carbon dioxide so the ants die. (Impractical)  Quit eating around your computer. (Improbable)  Or build an ant bridge.

How to build an ant bridge:

Fill a tray with water.  Put cups in the water as a stand.  Set your electronic devise on top of the cups.  Use a spoon as a bridge from your electronic devise to the floor.

Apparently, ants constantly scout around their home.  They will soon realize their home is surrounded by water with only one small path out, making it an unsuitable home.  So they will leave via the spoon bridge but will not return back up it as the home is no longer a good one.

As I surveyed my work, feeling quite pleased with my ant bridges, I couldn't help but laugh out loud.  What a ridiculous life!  I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep but here I was at 11:00 at night building ant bridges. 

I probably should have been an engineer!

In case you ever have to deal with computer ants, you can skip the ant bridge solution.  It didn't work.