Sometimes over on formiculture, the premiere ant-keeping discussion forum, parents show up and post because their kid is keeping ants and Something Has Gone Wrong. These are some of the most cryptic and unintentionally hilarious posts on the site.
Title: Random shoots from ant sandwich?
Post: "My son bought an ant farm. It contained a box a tube and a sandwich. He started with lasius Niger ants these died. We bought some fire ants. Now there are shots."
Are the fire ants in a gang? Is that why there are shots fired?
Is your son really keeping ants in a sandwich? seems... messy.
Who BUYS fire ants? Who sells them? How can we make them stop?
No, for real is this just a sandwich covered in ants?
(As it turns out the parent thought a glass panel formicarium is called a 'sandwich' ... the shoots are plants growing in the soil they used to fill it. Thank you for letting me be snarky here so I can now try to help this poor parent. ) 2/
@futurebird@irenes "Here's the thing. You said a "pogonomyrmex is a fire ant." Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that..."
"Pogo no Myrmex" (ポゴのマーメクス) sounds like an anime about a little ant that rides around on a pogo stick. It makes me think of the first boss, Mack, from Super Mario RPG.
Part of the issue with parent posts is they never give a species name, there are no photos, they don't say if there is a queen. They want to help which is cool, but it's all second hand info and it can be very confusing.
I think this person is getting some of the help they need, but I still have questions about buying fire ants... I hope they are down south...
@futurebird
.... So, so many questions ....
(Setting aside the painful bites they give.)
Why would you -buy- fire ants when they are everywhere?
Would they even make a good ant farm species since their nests tend to be large?