Yes I know, first I'm writing about the likelihood of contacting alien civilizations, then I'm talking about immortal humans who have sex for three days straight and write books in their sleep, and then about creepy flickrites, and now I am writing about watching ants.  You don't come here for consistency.

I was leaving my office around lunchtime the other day for a brief walk.  The front of the building has a raised garden with some azaleas and a really nice looking stone wall bordering it.  As I walked out I noticed the wall was swimming in tiny black ants.  Not the big ones you see wondering solo, but hordes of teensy ones.  Usually that means that a tasty food item has been discovered and the colony is out to disassemble it and carry it back.  I could see where the ants were clumped up, but didn't notice anything there that I recognized as anything ants would want to eat.  But I figured maybe somebody had spilled a soda and they were gobbling up dried sugars right off the rockface.  I went off to my walk and didn't think any more about it.

Later that night when I left work, I glanced at the wall and noticed the big cluster of ants was still there, but it had moved a few feet to the right.  Again no food was evident.  Just ants in a big tangled mass.  So I leaned close to peer at them and noticed that ants were bunching up around other ants, and apparently biting each other.  Other ants seemed to be carrying away dead (or dying ants).  I leaned back and noticed that unlike a typical feeding situation where you see a river of ants leading from the colony to the food and back, this was the meeting place of two rivers of ants.  One from one crevice about 5 feet to the left, and another from a crevice about 4 feet to the right.

That's when I realized I wasn't watching a feeding frenzy.  I was watching a war.  It was an epic battle between two colonies of ants that had both claimed this rock wall as their territory.  Thousands upon thousands of ants continually poured from both crevices, and converged in the center to engage in a massive melee.  It was mesmerizing to watch the supply lines bringing in fresh ants as the wounded or the dead were hauled away (presumably as food).  They moved in tides and complex whorling patterns as they made war... it was so intricate it was actually mesmerizing.  I checked my camera bag but I had neglected to bring ANY macro lenses with me that day, or I would have had pictures of all-out insect warfare and abject carnage to upload to my photostream.

It made me a little sad to think of these ants fighting for hours over a few feet of turf.  After 15 minutes I suddenly realized the time and made a mental note to bring my macro lens to work today.

But when I arrived this morning, the battle was over, and the battlefield had been swept clean.  Had I not noticed it, the day before, I never would have known it had happened.  In my inner thoughts I could not help but make the connection between the affairs of the ants and the affairs of humanity.  In 100,000 years, if humans are still here, what great battles and wretched suffering of ours will have passed into the unknown?  Will we forget World War 2?  Will we forget the Holocaust?  Will we repeat it?  Big thoughts from the tragic ant war of June 25, 2008.

What is it that prevents some people from realizing when they are being creepy?  I recently uploaded some photos to my flickr photostream from a birthday party I attended.  Then later I was tooling around in the Fitchburg Photo Pool and saw some cool architectural photos, so I left a comment telling the photographer I thought the shots were nice.

Within minutes I had three e-mails.  The first was flickr informing me that the photographer had added me as a contact.  The second seemed nice enough, the photographer wanted to talk about other landmarks that were good to shoot.  The third seemed a little peculiar and forward for someone who doesn't know me from dirt:

 "Hey how do you know that girl XXXXX in your photostream?  She's a real knockout!"

So I responded about Fitchburg landmarks, and on the second item, remarked just that she was a friend of a friend, and that she was very photogenic.

Within minutes, two more e-mails.  More chatting about landmarks and camera gear as well, and the second:

 "Man is she cute.  Hmm."

So I'm getting a little weirded out by this dude.  I mean, if you are friends with someone it's one thing to compliment someone they know once, but if you barely know a person it's kind of creepy to do it repeatedly.  So I decided I didn't really want to keep talking to this guy, and chose not to respond.

A few minutes later, another e-mail comes along:

 "Do you think she would let me take some shots of her sometime?"

Yeah.  That will happen.  She's going to pose for some stranger on the internet because a friend of a friend photographed her at a party.  Who asks a question like this of someone they barely know?  I have a terrible time just asking people I do know if they will pose for me.

Any way, I really didn't want to talk to creepy dude any more, I knew if I called him on it I'd get assured up and down that his request was completely innocent in nature.  As if it is quite normal to ask strangers on the internet if you can photograph their friends.  I mean seriously, if you are THAT desperate for models, there are places to go (http://www.modelmayhem.com/).  So I just blocked him... that will be the end of that, thanks.

I generally think it wise, when someone adds you as a contact on flickr, or favorites one of your photos, to check their profile and see what groups they subscribe to, and to also check their favorites.  It's usually quite clear when they are using flickr for something other than an appreciation of great (or even mediocre) photography.  If you see anything that looks creepy, it's probably a good idea to block them.

Creepy dude didn't have any bizarre group subscriptions or prurient favorites that I could see, but his behavior was enough to warrant the block IMHO.  The only thing his profile had to say about him other than a laundry list of his gear was that he was "Male and single".

Call me "Male and unsurprised".