8/8/10

Making Someone's Wishes Come True is a Treasure

I love helping my husbands dreams come true :-)

Michael has wanted a queen ant for about as long as he can remember.
He always thought it was illegal own one, and so he never got one growing up. 

Well, we did some research, turns out it isn't illegal to own one as long as you don't send her outside of the state you got her in.

Michael was having a hard day (about a month ago) and I suggested we go looking for a queen ant. 
That sure cheered him up!

So, we got some friends (Nicholas and Rebecca) and we gathered our shovels, and we went into the Provo Canyon a ways.

We packed lots of water, and snacks. We were sure it would take hours!
But it only took about 30 minutes!

Nicholas and Michael started looking for ants under rocks, Nicholas found a bunch, and they started to dig. They happened to dig right into the egg chamber, which is always near the queen! 

Rebecca was documenting the trip too

With some careful digging, they were able to capture the queen, along with a ton of other ants from the colony. Including soldiers, workers, "nurse" ants, larva, and eggs!

All in a days work.

Then they started having a fake shovel fight 

That little jar contained the queen and all the ants!
Michael was so excited!

Michael now has three ant farms, one he got for Christmas from my dad and Step-Mom, and it is filled with red ants. 

His newest ant "farm" he just started. 
We found a new queen ant as we were walking from our car to our apartment! So he has a little container holding her and her new eggs.

The other is this flat one that has the queen and her colony he got that day, his first queen ant!

He loves looking at them

He is so cute!


4 comments:

viewfromdownhere said...

sounds fun! Now how, exactly, do you know that an ant is the Queen ant? Just curious...they all seem so small!

Melissa said...

What a delightful thing to do for him and it looks as if you had loads of fun!!

Helena said...

Cross that one off the bucket list!

The Shrub said...

Aww -good wife award for that trip! I'm sure he was cheered up! :)