I briefly considered the idea that “ant farms,” and specifically the practice of intentionally caving in tunnels (That’s what I quoted; I don’t demand that you click it) so the ants can be observed digging again, are horrible and cruel, but there are much nastier and widelier publicized ways to trap, deprive of purpose and kill your ants. Appropriately enough, called “ant traps.” But even those are probably a bit excessive. I suspect any creatures which dutifily proceed into the base of a near empty drink receptacle and die there in moist, pastey piles, as I’ve seen them do near my kitchen sink on more procrastinaty days, probably don’t have much will to live to begin with. Ants work until they die. The only exception is when they fight, and they only fight when their work is interrupted. Working, fighting, dying, it’s all they know how to do, and all they can know how to do. You’re probably helping them by speeding that along. Their whole lives are cruel. Not like slaves; they’re only officially slaves if another ant colony kidnaps them and enslaves them. It’s actually an instinctual, biological function that they make slaves of each other. Recently documented resistance to the slavery is even more cruel. Ant farming would only truly be cruel if you stuffed the ants inside a chinless, cube-headed symbol of depression era escapism-turned-proud redneck put-em-in-their-place anti feminism and gave that to someone who has a concept of cruelty. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if living Shoebox greeting card Sarah Palin owns several Betty Boop products. However, in the interest of fairness and equal time I must acknowledge that Mitt Romney scares me.

Another peculiar, cruel-sounding aspect of ant farms, is that after purchasing them you’re supposed to send an included coupon or something to the Uncle Miltie company which will then mail live ants to you, free of further charge, accommodated by “an ant wrangler in Utah” which vaccuums a specific type of farm-compatible ant straight from the dirt at unspecified points in the state of Utah. Naturally, when I had an ant farm, I was not aware of or simply unwilling to deal with the mailing portion of the deal, and so just collected whatever ants I could find and dropped / shoved them into the thing. The ants dug no tunnels. They ate none of the narrow, food-like items I slid in with them, including one(1) Mr. Phipp’s Pretzel Chip. To their credit, though, they did as marvelous a job dying as any ants I’ve yet encountered. I will always remember them, and how they’re dead. I didn’t even eat them. Oh yeah and at the time I liked to eat ants.

Some years later, I found myself wanting to throw beehives at all possible aspects, name included, of the music band Alien Ant Farm, whose only hit was a song by someone else which had already been a hit. This youtube link and preview image are not working to rectify my disruptive urges.