Another R.I.P.

The dead body of a space ant was found at Santa Catarina Plane. Armstrong passed away.

Most likely cause of this fatality: Old Age.

Pictures of the Week 09 (Expedition I)

Coco Channel Mambo Nº 5

I am happy to be able to announce that yet another bonk occurred. The tunnel west of the Zagatón area hit the sinkhole south of Anatolia and, consequently, another channel came into being, forming the second passage between Birnie Loch and Loch Coruisk.

After Highway 1, Avenida Atlântica, Avenida General Paz and St Marx's Place, this is the 5th channel in this habitat and shall therefore be named Channel Nº 5.

Many thanks (in alphabetical order) to Armstrong, Armstrong, Armstrong, Armstrong and Armstrong. Of course this could not have been achieved without Armstrong, Armstrong and Armstrong. Not to forget Armstrong and all the others. And last but not least: Armstrong.

Thank you all for your vision, faith and confidence.

Pictures of the Week 08 (Expedition I)

Three New Sinkholes

After nearly two month in the tube, Armstrong and her crewmates are still digging.

Pictures of the Week 07 (Expedition I)

Armstrong

Its time to give my ants proper names!

AntWorks® suggest the following: "If you decide to name your ants, you might choose Armstrong as a surname".
Now AntWorks® need to be funny to sell their product. Their reasoning goes like this: Ant workers can carry up to 50 times their own weight blah blah blah (and all the crap you learnt at school), so they are very strong, "armstrong" ha ha ha.

I will call them "Armstrong" for a different reason: At the end of the day, they are "space ants" and as we all know: Neil Armstrong made space history. He was the first person ever to NOT set his foot on the moon (because the moon landing was a fake).

This is why I will call my ants "Armstrong".

Of course it is a bit odd to give them all the same name, but for me they all look the same and I don't know how to distinguish them so what else can I possibly do?

Pictures of the Week 06 (Expedition I)

The Space Ant Baby

View of the baby's birthplace

It is healthy, tiny and cute.
We welcome the new citizen of earth. Everybody is happy. The Expedition I crew also sends out the very best wishes.
Unfortunately I cannot provide any picture of the toddler yet, and when I finally have the opportunity to see it in two weeks from now, it will most likely be a grown up.

Breaking News: Space Ant Born

This just came in (my girlfriend called me): A small space ant baby was born.
I will post as soon as more info is available. Stay tuned...

RR.II.PP.

Two more are gone.

They are now somewhere else. This is how things are.

(They seem to prefer to say ciao in the Zacatón area. I do not know whether this is simply their favourite retirement place, or because this part of the habitat may lack oxygen due to rockfills from construction works.)

More Pictures Of Ms No's AntWorks

St Mark's Place

Lets not forget to mention that the crew cleaned up a little bit in tunnel C2 and removed some deposits, which made it finally possible to inaugurate the habitat's fourth channel.
I name it St. Mark's Place, which actually is not a place but a famous street in Manhattan. I hope this is not confusing.

More Space Egg Pictures

Super Bonk

Back from my Easter trip to No's ant farm, my own crew surprised me with an architectonic milestone: the western flank of Avenida Atlântica reached Anatolia Den.

This has far reaching implications: from now on it is possible to go from any loch to any other loch in the system without the need to traverse the Highlands. For example you could even go from Loch Eck at the very west to Loch Dungeon at the very east . That's cool and convenient!

Highway 1 and Avenida Atlântica are now connected and form a truly intercontinental highway (sort of).

A historic achievement which was only possible because of the hard work of each individual ant.

Per formiga ad astra!

Amazing: Space Ant Eggs!

My girlfriend's AntWorks® is quite different to mine: Not only do her ants have focus, they also have eggs!

I thing I have spotted three of them. But are they really eggs? Or are they grub? Or cocoons?

And where do they come from?

I don't know. As soon as this blog gets more page views, I will have the money to educate myself and you as well.

For the meanwhile, just look at this cute ant looking at us with her faithful dog eyes, showing us this wonderful egg/grub/cocoon - making you wanna hug and cuddle that lovely creature.

Truly amazing this is. Happy Easter!

Easter Ants

Are you tired of ants from outer space in always the same blue unnatural neon gel?

Well, good news! AntWorks® habitats are now also available with green unnatural neon gel and red unnatural neon gel. As you can see here.

"That's not what I meant", I hear you shout.

OK, I brought for you a picture from my weekend trip: real, happy, free range, fair trade non-space ants.

(The first time I have spotted ants in nature this year.)

Dream Start For Ms No

My girlfriend - lets call her "Ms No" - also got an AntWorks® habitat recently, and the ants arrived just when she was about to leave for Portugal with me. Hence, she could not be with them in their initial days but she could hear from friends what she had missed.
Things got off unbelievably well: her ants were hyperactive right from the start and created two tunnels from the surface to the bottom of the container in their first day.

A passage from the "Highlands" to the "Lowlands" - all in only one day! An achievement my honorable crew still fails to deliver after more than one month.

The environment over there looks very different compared to the one in ASH-1. Those ants really have a focus in their life. Not this dowdy "a bit of tunnel here and a little bonk there".
Now they calmed down a little bit and most of them rest in the hangar which you can see on the bottom right of the picture.

Pictures of the Week 05 (Expedition I)

Bonk To Avenida Atlântica

Tunnel C2 bonked into Avenida Atlântica today. A huge success with a wermutstropfen: the crew fell short to create another channel, because they previousley cut off C2 with deposits from another passage.

It is a pity that there is no architect, because I would sack him now.

Three New Tunnels

Three new tunnels in one day is not bad. The crew is happy that I am back, obviously.
All three originate from Loch Coruisk and are directed towards the west.

For bookkeeping reasons, I designate them as C5.1, C5.2 and C5.3.

Busy Monday

This Monday, more has been achieved than during the last 9 days (from a construction point of view).

Once again it is the Zacatón area where the action is. A tunnel the length of half an inch was created heading from the den towards the occident.

Zacatón Bubble (Back from Portugal)

Back am I, and the good news is that I have not seen any new causalities.

As expected, there was not very much progress, but the Zacatón area continues to surprise: Zacatón Den which previously had shrunken to an isolated bubble, grew big again and got re-connected to the Vietcong.

I have no explanation for this. Maybe one of the three ants in the bubble did not pass away and applied an extra shift instead.

Note that the picture above is in black and white because I show ant cadavers for the first time in this blog.

Antworks® say that "should an ant die within one of the tunnels, other ants will usually transport the body to the surface".

But transportation gets difficult if the tunnel around the dead ant dissolves.

I haven't thought about this when I bought the Antworks® farm. Having an ant colony is freaky enough - but displaying pictures of dead insects is holy moly freaky.