Ant Stories

Story #1

In Americus, I learned what it tastes like when an ant bites your tongue.

An ant had crawled onto my water bottle and somehow I didn't drink him when I put the water bottle to my mouth for a drink. I felt something between my teeth and my tongue and thought it was a piece of grass. I was rolling it around to get it out when it bit my tongue. It wasn't painful, but it sure tasted strange. I stuck my tongue out and could see the ant still holding on.

If you'd like to try this, you want to be careful which species you choose. Although this species left red circles on my feet (14 on my right and 8 on my left), it didn't leave a mark on my tongue.

Story #2

That evening, we went out to eat and I found that I had dropped a bit of gravy on my leg just above my sock. Although I got the gravy off my leg, I didn't get it all off my sock. Ants found the gravy, so I left the sock outside the tent that night. When I got up in the morning, the ants and the gravy were gone. The ants had eaten it all.

Story #3

When we got to Douglas, we came across a different species of ant. These were not biting my feet, but they found my bike to be a good source of food. There was something they liked inside my seat pack and they also discovered the Powerade that had dripped onto my frame from the water bottles. They apparently decided this was a good place to call home and moved into my rear stay. The drainage hole was just the right size for them.



This photo was taken in Baxley. These ants have travelled about 150 miles on my bike. First they got shaken up on the century ride, chose to remain on the bike after returning to Douglas, and then rode with me to Baxley. They must like where they live now, because they haven't gotten off.

Story #4

One ant met an unfortunate fate. It looks like he may have been walking along my wheel at a rest stop, then had to hang on as I started rolling again. Judging from the collision with my BRAG "license plate" shown below, he probably held on until I was going pretty fast and the centripetal force overcame his ability to hold on.

Story #5

After driving from Savannah to Atlanta with the bike on the back of a car, it looked like all the ants had been blown off of the bike. I sat the bike on the deck behind the house and looked in vain to find any ants. Perhaps my 15-20 MPH wasn't enough to blow them off but the 70-75 MPH highway speed was.

Wrong.

After a while, I was able to count more than 100 ants still walking around (AVI movie). These ants had camped out inside the bike, travelled from Douglas on Tuesday, to Savannah on Saturday and then to Atlanta.

They've been pretty good companions along the ride, but I couldn't bring them in the house and I wasn't leaving the bike outside. It was time to say goodbye to my companions.