Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Aarons Ant Farm
I work in online advertising; part of my job is to review potential websites and programs as potential places for us to buy ad space for our clients. The other day a gentleman came in to show us how we might be able to sponsor advertising on this game site. The game he was using as an example was called Ant War. I had a hard time staying focused on the Ant War game as it only made me think back to the time I had a real ant war right in my office. Yes, it’s true; we actually had an ant war on the sixth floor of an office building in the middle of the financial district at an internet company.
One Monday morning my good buddy and coworker Aaron arrived with a new ant farm. It was an impulse buy he had picked up over the weekend at the hardware store in The Castro. We cast our work aside fro the time being, assembled it on his desk and added the sand. The only thing that didn’t come in the kit was the ants, we had to send for them by mail and they would arrive in about ten days. Around this time Aaron was leaving on vacation in Miami Beach so I was left in charge of safely introducing our new pets to their new home.
My first order of business was to make the old Middle Eastern receptionist aware I was expecting some very important guests. Her name was Anjuna and would take the Bart in from Fremont every day. She seemed upset that I was having insects sent to the office but I was sure she would get over it, other people were having porn delivered and sometimes I would have my ecstasy orders delivered via fed ex, the ants shouldn’t be a problem either. A few hours later I was called into the HR managers’ office…Great… what have I done now? Apparently Anjuna was very upset that bugs were on their way to the office, she just didn’t feel comfortable getting the mail and put in a complaint to human resources. After explaining that the ants would be contained in their farm, and that there was no way I could stop the mail from coming I gave her some Banana Republic gift certificates and she let me off the hook without writing me up. These kinds of bribes worked every time with these ladies…but our employee manual did say that live animals were not allowed at work.
A few days later the ants arrived; they came in a little plastic tube and looked very angry once I took the tube out of the dark envelope. The instructions recommended I put them in the refrigerator for a while as the cooler temperature would help calm them down before they are introduced to their new farm. After about 20 minutes in the ice box I was ready to put them in their home. I called over our trusty lesbian Amy for help just in case I needed it, lesbians are so good with cats I thought maybe they could help with ants too. Unfortunately we had trouble getting the ants into their farm… they accidentally missed entrance and went running all over the desk. All the dike started to do was scream and start running around… what good is she!? I picked up all the ants that could catch and put them one by one into the farm and closed up the hole. Many of my coworkers stood around and just stared... "don't just stand there you dumb shits... DO SOMETHING!"
Over the next few days the ants were quite busy working on their new home. They started to dig tunnels, hills and holes while snacking on sugar water and apple slices we would feed them for lunch. These ants certainly worked harder than me and Aaron. But after about a week something drastic changed in the ants…they had started a turf war with each other and were fighting all day every day. Each morning AJ and I would come in to find a few more ants had met their doom. For the ants that were still alive if they weren’t trying to kill other live ants they would drag all the dead ant bodies to a big hole in the bottom of the farm and pile them up. When there was just one ant left living in the farm we decided to release him. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of dead people either. So, we took him out to the deck overlooking the bay and freed him into one of the potted plants.
After out ant experience was over we had to move onto bigger projects, like getting our boss fired. That’s a story for another day.
Love thy ant as thy self!
One Monday morning my good buddy and coworker Aaron arrived with a new ant farm. It was an impulse buy he had picked up over the weekend at the hardware store in The Castro. We cast our work aside fro the time being, assembled it on his desk and added the sand. The only thing that didn’t come in the kit was the ants, we had to send for them by mail and they would arrive in about ten days. Around this time Aaron was leaving on vacation in Miami Beach so I was left in charge of safely introducing our new pets to their new home.
My first order of business was to make the old Middle Eastern receptionist aware I was expecting some very important guests. Her name was Anjuna and would take the Bart in from Fremont every day. She seemed upset that I was having insects sent to the office but I was sure she would get over it, other people were having porn delivered and sometimes I would have my ecstasy orders delivered via fed ex, the ants shouldn’t be a problem either. A few hours later I was called into the HR managers’ office…Great… what have I done now? Apparently Anjuna was very upset that bugs were on their way to the office, she just didn’t feel comfortable getting the mail and put in a complaint to human resources. After explaining that the ants would be contained in their farm, and that there was no way I could stop the mail from coming I gave her some Banana Republic gift certificates and she let me off the hook without writing me up. These kinds of bribes worked every time with these ladies…but our employee manual did say that live animals were not allowed at work.
A few days later the ants arrived; they came in a little plastic tube and looked very angry once I took the tube out of the dark envelope. The instructions recommended I put them in the refrigerator for a while as the cooler temperature would help calm them down before they are introduced to their new farm. After about 20 minutes in the ice box I was ready to put them in their home. I called over our trusty lesbian Amy for help just in case I needed it, lesbians are so good with cats I thought maybe they could help with ants too. Unfortunately we had trouble getting the ants into their farm… they accidentally missed entrance and went running all over the desk. All the dike started to do was scream and start running around… what good is she!? I picked up all the ants that could catch and put them one by one into the farm and closed up the hole. Many of my coworkers stood around and just stared... "don't just stand there you dumb shits... DO SOMETHING!"
Over the next few days the ants were quite busy working on their new home. They started to dig tunnels, hills and holes while snacking on sugar water and apple slices we would feed them for lunch. These ants certainly worked harder than me and Aaron. But after about a week something drastic changed in the ants…they had started a turf war with each other and were fighting all day every day. Each morning AJ and I would come in to find a few more ants had met their doom. For the ants that were still alive if they weren’t trying to kill other live ants they would drag all the dead ant bodies to a big hole in the bottom of the farm and pile them up. When there was just one ant left living in the farm we decided to release him. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of dead people either. So, we took him out to the deck overlooking the bay and freed him into one of the potted plants.
After out ant experience was over we had to move onto bigger projects, like getting our boss fired. That’s a story for another day.
Love thy ant as thy self!
