The Live Bridge

  Early this morning, we decided that the swimming pool that we purchased for the grandlittles' visit needed to be given a new home. First. we had to empty the thing of the couple of thousand gallons of water.  Not a problem...or so we thought.  The emptying was easy.  The finding a place for that much water was not easy.  With all of the recent rains (we have received well over our average yearly rainfall quota already), the ground is saturated.   Although we live on a high hill above the Bayou, the ground is soggy.  You can only pour so much water on something before it gets full and refuses to soak up any more. (As I am writing this, rain is once again pelting the Little Bayou House...oh fun!) The water draining from the pool was more or less just sitting in a huge puddle.  Imagine three inches of water just puddling on top of a hill!  Crazy!

  After about half of the water drained through the opened plug hole, I noticed that we had a shimmering, squirming, living bridge thing happening on the north side of the pool.  Obviously, some ants had made a nest somewhere under the azalea bushes nearby and they were being flooded out of their home.  With nowhere else to go, they clung to each other to make this mass floating bridge.  From there, a single file of ants of was making its way to the top of the board path and then on to find a new homesite.  

  With ants, it is all about the survival of the colony instead of the self.  Inevitably, some ants would die because of their selfless act of being the lower ones on the bridge but the colony, itself, would have enough survivors to recreate a nest.  (Well, in most cases this would happen.  Not this time.  I could not take the chance of letting this many fire ants live this close to the Little Bayou House.  There are too many children that visit.  So, as much as I hate to kill any living being, the ants had to go.  A can of spray obliterated the bridge.  Hopefully, any remaining ants will journey a good ways away from the house to continue their lives.