Carpenter Ant Death March

[Matt Fellman]

Since I'm not exactly swamped doing inspections I headed for the coast this weekend. A rare May heat wave hit the area and the usually cool coast was almost 100 degrees.

As my wife and I were walking on the beach I noticed something pretty strange.... Carpenter Ants by the 1000's marching towards the ocean and eventually being swallowed up and drowning. The beach was absolutely littered with them and more were coming as fast as they could.

I've lived in Oregon my entire life and have probably been on the beach several hundred times of more and have never seen such a thing.

I'm thinking it had something to do with the sudden heat. Either that or they're sick of the political campaigning :)

I think with the heat they just went a bit haywire and were heading for cooler places not realizing what they were doing.

It looked pretty strange for sure....

[Jerry Peck]

One word ...

Lemmings.

Or maybe the Pied Piper of Ants?

Hate to waste a good beach like that, but at least it served a purpose.

Weird!

For some reason I just had a vision of that being a Benny Hill show, what with some of his weird stuff.

[David Banks]

Any pics?

[Matt Fellman]

Sorry, no pics... Typical to Oregon weather the temp is supposed to be about 30 degrees cooler tomorrow so I imagine the activity will be gone. I'll bring my camera just in case.

fwiw... the bug activity around here has been totally crazy during the last week. I saw big fat black carpenter ants as several houses. We had a very cool spring and all of the sudden it got really hot.

It's about 80 miles from my house to the coast and I had to stop and clean my windshield twice along the way. It sounded like it was raining as I was driving down last night just before dusk. The front of my 5th wheel looks like it was paintball target practice.

[Jerry McCarthy]

Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock is in town? Nah, he be dead, I think? :confused:

[wayne soper]

I had a dream last night and thousands of brokers were walking off a cliff into the ocean. I woke up smiling and had a great day.

[Scott Patterson]

They know that the "Big One" is on the way! They are ending it in the water instead of under a boulder! :D

[David Banks]

They know A Giant Tsunami will hit the West Coast of America. Head inland Matt!

[Jerry McCarthy]

Matt
Are you sure those ants wheren't carrying mini surf boards?
They would be doing that if they where California ants. :D

[Rolland Pruner]

I like Waynes dream, if that counts.


Rolland Pruner
Livermore, Calif