Pen Pen's Evangelion
A Pen Pen for your Thoughts
This section will just be for, basically random thoughts and feelings. Since my thought process is mostly random you can probably expect this to be updated frequently. Back to Previous Pennys. Back to Pen Penny.
Ant Attack
Ants, sure we all love them, the way they scurry about the house looking for food, swarming wherever a crumb may lay, crawling in a line like a group of young ducklings if they had more feet and were insect-like, the pitter patter of their little feet across your plate, like a small colony of little angels, with six legs and a hard outer shell of some sort. We all have realized at one time or another the genetic superiority of our six-legged friends, but we never thought they’d cash in on it, after all, we live in peace with one another, a gooey, icky peace as we smash ants with shoes and paper towels, or just gas them in an excruciatingly painful way. Well, this “peace” at least works out for us.
All of this may change, for in Melbourne Australia a so-called “super colony” of also so-called “super ants” are probably as I am so-calling them “super pissed.” This colony of Argentine ants has spread over sixty-two miles threatening the local insect and plant population according to scientists, and according to me, they’re also threatening the world. This species of ant are considered one of the world’s 100 worst animal invaders, and with the future takeover of Melbourne they seem to be planning, they’re probably wanting and expecting to move up on that list a couple of spots at least.
The Argentine ants displace other ants and insects, sending them to ant reservations and ant casinos. The ants were first identified in 1939 around the time the Second World War began, and are most likely part of a long-term strategy the Japanese armed forces developed during a contest as to who could come up with the most ineffective attack plan ever. Monash University scientist Elissa Suhr said the ants had genetically changed during their voyage from Argentina and that had in turn changed their behavior, which now threatened local plants and insects, much like how two completely different people who dislike each other can find love over a couple hours spent together in a small place in some cheesy romance movie.
The small brown Argentine ants are about 4mm long, and are not considered dangerous to humans or pets, well, unless they attack in mass numbers, all at once and try to overthrow the yoke of human oppression, like in that one MacGyver episode. Though naturally these ants only spread slowly and gradually, this particular group of ants have spread farther by hitch-hiking through trade, commerce, and quite possibly some sort of prostitution. Normally a population boom like this wouldn’t be possible because the ants normally fight amongst themselves, but due to their new-found ant-brotherhood, their numbers have skyrocketed to near horror-movie proportions.
Suhr and other scientists are currently studying the Argentine ant colonies in Perth and Adelaide to see if they share the same genetic structure and behavior as the Melbourne ants. If they do, a super colony several thousand miles wide could spread across southern Australia, probably signaling the end of the era of man, at least in southern Australia. But apparently, Australia isn’t alone in its strife, according to Suhr, they have a foothold in California, which isn’t all that bad in itself, I mean, who needs California, but they could spread to other, more important areas, like Nevada. We have an advantage to stave off these invaders though, we have MacGyver. - 8/14/04
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