Killer Ant: Super Siafu

This is the Super Siafu Ant. I was inspired while watching a documentary on discovery about killer ants (I've watched it before, and yet everytime I notice it on I realize that I have to watch it again.) In real life the Siafu are driver ants that live and work in Africa. They are quite scary in their own right with a nasty sting and sharp jaws. But why stop there? My imagination took it a lot farther to create a Super Siafu. This ant here is roughly the size of a buick, and probably bench presses them to stay in shape. This lovely lady is a worker drone from a colony of many ants. So imagine an army of these cuddly looking guys marching toward you.

I've always loved insects. I captured and studied them as a child and often drew them. I remember doodling lines of tiny marching ants up the margin of my lined note paper as early as fisrt grade. Often times I would make little cartoons of them complete with speech bubbles containing wise cracking remarks. I can't recall what they said to each other, but I do know it was very witty.

My mom hates bugs, and could scarcely tolerate my love for them. Once during the seven year cicada diaspera in Ohio, 1986 I brought in a small bug collector jar litterally jammed packed with the squirming black cicadas. Upon showing it to my mother with pride, I think she nearly fainted. Needless to say I was sumerily ordered to take them outside and release them at once. Some how one managed to stay indoors and visited my mom while she was in the shower.

In spite of my love of ants my mother never let me have an ant farm. She was of the mind that if I got an ant farm one would get loose and start a colony in her kitchen cabinets. Even at a young age I understood that that was impossible because ant farm kits rarely ever send you a queen ant, only eunich workers (not union workers, eunichs, as in sterile). Nevertheless, I wasn't allowed to get an ant farm as a child.

Years later while I was in college I was shopping at the local Walmart and noticed that they had the classic Uncle Milton giant ant farms on sale for under ten bucks. Yes, of course I bought one. If just to say, "See mom, Im an adult. I make my own choices, and I'm gonna get me that ant farm you never let me have, dammit!" I sent away for the ants using the kit's included postcard for free ants. Weeks later they arrived in a tiny plastic tub (rather cruel actually. But I guess so is packing 200 cicadas into a tiny jelly jar.) The ants were fun to watch. They dug tunnels, built bridges, horded their food, burried their dead. But they only lived for about two weeks. Kind of a rip off. But at least I had the experience. I ended up selling the whole kit on eBay for twice what I paid for it. (Yes, I dumped out the dead ants first.)