The other day I had some Chinese for lunch at work.  Some Kung Pao Chicken, medium spicey, to be exact.  Why I am talking about Kung Pao Chicken when I have a photo of ants here for illustration?  Very good question.  I dropped a piece of zuchinni that was covered with Kung Pao Chicken sauce under my desk.  I picked up the zuchinni and threw it in the trash, wiped up the spill, finished my lunch and then looked down at the floor.  Yep, covered in ants.  Living under my desk apparently.  Must have missed a spot.

While my co-worker went downtown to buy some ant traps and ant spray, I got my camera out, laid down on the floor and took some photos.  Some not very good photos.  My “busy as a bee” title from my last post could have been aptly applied here as “busy as an ant”.  The lighting under the desk wasn’t optimal – I had the aperture wide open and the ISO pretty high, but I still couldn’t get a very fast shutter speed.  I suppose I could have used my flash, but I don’t like flash.  This does, however, give you a sense of how quickly they were cleaning up what was left of the sauce.

I love my son, but he brought more stuff to my home tonight for me to store.  I don’t really have room for it, but to be honest, most of what he brought is actually his brother’s stuff.  Neither one of them have much room for storage.  This weekend I will be as busy as this bee cleaning out their old closets and reorganizing so I can get the pile out of my dining room and out of my glass studio.  Maybe I’ll start tonight…

It wasn’t until I was posting this photo that I realized this little guy has a broken antennae.  I wonder how that affects him?  Whenever I see a praying mantis, I think of The Lord’s Prayer.  Do you suppose the mantis forgave those who trespassed against him in breaking his antennae?  Was he led into temptation and in some way broke his antennae doing something he shouldn’t have been doing?  Was he fighting with another mantis?  Is this a she and not a he?  Lots of questions, but he wasn’t talking.  He was keeping an observant eye on me, however, while I was taking lots of photos of him.