Hungry ant

Beth's nature and wildlife challenge has now turned into a competition and up to three submissions per blipper are permitted, so today's challenge at the grove was to find something new once again. The main contenders were frogs and beetles, but you never know what is going to appear in front of the lens in the grove. A nice colorful tree frog or a head on shot of a rhino beetle would be great, but I have not seen either of those since I started blipping.

The best chance of a frog would be to get down to the stream, but as I haven't found any size 10 wellies yet, that was not going to happen. I figured crack of dawn, with lots of dew was the next best option, so 06:00 I was out there.

It was not a pleasant experience. Mosquitoes were my main problem and I spent most of the session swiping at them every time I felt a tickle on my feet, which also included every blade of grass that touched me. I crept through all the denser undergrowth hoping to chase a frog or toad into life but to no avail. After two laps of the grove I had plenty of blip material but nothing for the competition.

I returned to the lab to download what I had, as my computer gets upset if I try to work with more than fifty images. While I was processing the mornings images, it started raining again, the wet season is well underway now, but rain this early in the day is very unusual. I still had a hankering for a competition entry, so when the rain stopped I returned to the grove for a second session.

Still lots of nothing after another two laps. At least the mozzies had departed, but I had picked up about twenty bites from the first session and was itching like mad. On the way back to the bike, I noticed a moth slowly moving through the undergrowth, so I got down on my knees to see what was available and found this huge ant, dragging the ex-moth back to its nest.

I figured that this qualified as I had not featured ants before. I have thought about it, as there is no shortage of ants here and the added feature of it dragging its dinner along made it very blippable from a gruesome perspective. So it was knees and elbows again, following the hungry ant through its terrain.

On the way back to the house, while doing a U-turn to position the bike, the back wheel slipped on the metal drainage grid and over I went. My security guard came running to help me and he too fell over, it was that slippy. No major injuries, just skinned my knee and oddly enough, the tops of my sunburned toes.

My camera was fine, then checked the bike, that eventually started too, so all was well. Too hyper to mess with the computer, I decided to wander down to the food store, I was sure to get plenty of sympathy there. A young lass bathed my wounds and applied some Betadin disinfectant while I ooh'd and aarghed, much to the amusement of a couple of old ladies, who were shopping there. They had a real good laugh as I played along. Women love helpless men, they are so silly.

That's enough rambling, lets get on with it.

Dave