I opened our back shed to grab something and found this situation.
Ants had decided our shed would make a very nice anthill and they had been busy making my Christmas ornaments into their main egg storage area. Aside from eggs (apparently they are actually the pupal stage of complete metamorphosis) they had stuffed the box full of fluffy filler material (you can see some against the Cheerios box). Ants don’t normally give me the creepy crawlies, but in this quantity they sure did.
I ended up getting our trash grabber out of the other (ant-free) shed and using that to pick items up and fling them into the yard. They were in nearly every Christmas item: the ornaments, the advent calendar box had a big stack of eggs on top, the garland was full of the fluffy stuff.
Matt finished up a session with a client and helped me fling things.
I also learned that ants bite (or do something that caused me to repeatedly slap my feet while I was moving things to the back yard.)
Further learning occurred when later that night, both of the cats were very interested in my feet and the socks Matt had been wearing while he hauled things. There must have been a pheromone.
Another fun thing? I discovered some of our emergency food had been expired for three years.
So this week we’ve built a platform for the dryer, battled ants, and had to make a new plan for emergency food. It’s been a little taxing on the adrenals.