I have always thought ant farms were fascinating and having a little boy gave me all the more reason to get one. Lance wanted no part of the project as his cautious self could only envision the ants someday escaping their farm and taking over our home. Since we usually have planned gifts we get Cannon for Christmas and then while shopping we usually each get him something of our own choice (no questions asked), I decided this was the year my personal gift would be an ant farm!
I picked up this gel all-inclusive ant farm at Toys 'R Us for Christmas, but we had to order the harvest ants on line. They finally came in the mail this week! 25-30 huge red ants came in this little vile. After reading the instructions - carefully - we read that we needed to refrigerate the little crazies before taking their lid off. The refrigeration was supposed to settle them down so we could have an easy transfer from the vile to the gel farm.
This cool poster came with our supplies! Cannon was oh so hopeful we'd hang it in the kitchen next to the plant and the ants but, ahem, no.....it wasn't going to hang in our kitchen by the table. Nice try. He settled for letting the poster sit next to the farm in case we needed to reference something.
He was really quite excited and fascinated about the idea of having them in our house; hence the silly grin.
I like the fact that once the lid is on, it's on! The gel provides all the moisture and nutrients they need. We pre-dug the three tunnels you see. Their job (after they get settled in to their new home) is to continue digging, building and "working" as they would in a normal habitat!
Updates and death toll to come. I'm sure they won't all survive. My question is - what do the live ones do with the dead ones???
So cool! I had no clue there were gel ant farms! I can so see us doing this with the boys someday! Keep the picture updates coming! =)
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