Day 16 - Paradise lost?

(posted by Stinkographer 2)

The meat is smelling wonderful again, I expect as a result of our intrusive inspection. By wonderful I mean awful. But something was different today.

In a shocking turn of events, the ants appear to have abandoned the plate almost entirely. Over the span of just 24 hours, the once bustling meat metropolis has become a barren wasteland.

It was quite nippy outside today, and our first thought was that the cold might have driven the ants away. But this does not entirely make sense, for the plate is actually sitting right next to several large pipes connected to the Tufts steam network. These pipes radiate a large amount of heat--one of the primary reasons we selected this location.

Furthermore, it's not that the ants are gone. They're just no longer on the meat...

Just south of the plate, the ants are still showing a heavy presence in the area. Hundreds of them were dispersed around the entryway to their underground fortress when I took this photo.

Ants were also moving about the western perimeter of the plate. What you see here is a group of ants carrying away a white object. It is unfortunate that the photo is a bit blurry, because when I viewed this white object in person it looked suspiciously like a dead maggot! The fact that the maggot is dead is a bit discouraging, but it must have come from somewhere! Could there be more of them?? We're keeping our fingers crossed.

As we examine our photos in detail, it's really quite surprising how vacant the meat has become. While I noticed a few ant bodies on top of the bacon in this picture, they were actually all dead, as far as I could tell.

What happened overnight? Did all the ants on the plate get wiped out? Exiled? Abducted? Incinerated? An insect genocide, or "insecticide," if you will? Personally, I enjoy the speculation that this has something to do with the ruptured giblet sack. It's entirely possible that the queen, sensing a hazardous materials crisis, gave the order to evacuate.

Another interesting observation from the last photo: the bacon seems to be melding with the pork chop. It's almost as if it's healing over time. They did, after all, come from the same animal.

Continue to Day 17