34 replies to this topic

[AntsDakota]

I often keep mine in empty water bottles when bringing them home.

[NickAnter]

My sock. While wearing the sock. During PE at school. Now I bring a test tube to school every day.

[AntsDakota]

I think once I didn't have anything and I carried a queen home cupped in my hand..... 

[Major]

My underwear. It just crawled right in there and found a warm spot (cough cough) and I started panicking cause there was a solenopsis sp. queen crawling around my man parts.

[ANTdrew]

My underwear. It just crawled right in there and found a warm spot (cough cough) and I started panicking cause there was a solenopsis sp. queen crawling around my man parts.

I think Major wins this one.
For me, it was a Nerds candy box while trick-or-treating with my kids.

[ForestDragon]

ooh boy, i was waiting for my mom to pick me up and i found a queen, i kept hold of its legs for 10 min before my mom gave me a pill bottle with some of her adhd meds that she moved to a plastic bag so i could keep the queen,(the plastic bag was dirty af thanks mom)

[ponerinecat]

A test tube. That was smaller than usual.

[Pumpkin_Loves_Ants]

One time I had to dig a used juice bottle out of the trash to catch a formica queen. I'm really surprised that that's the weirdest thing I've caught on in considering I forget to take test tubes pretty often.

[kgollehon]

Put one in a pencil sharpener one time, one of those ones with the shaving wells. Was very ill prepared happening upon a large nuptial flight in Joshua Tree on one of my camping trips. Also used several water bottles and an inhaler box that day haha! 

[Mettcollsuss]

I have two contestants.

 

One of them was my very first queen, a Camponotus pennsylvanicus (that turned out to be infertile). I was on a field trip with my class and saw her on a tree but had no containers on me, so I began asking everyone around me if they had anything I could use. My teacher ended up quickly drinking the rest of her Starbucks iced-coffee-esque drink (I don't remember exactly what it was) and giving me the cup to use.

 

The other one was when I was at a summer camp and didn't have any tubes during a Formica subsericea flight so I had to take one of my socks off and carry her in that. Hiking back to the cabin without a sock wasn't exactly fun.

[ForestDragon]

A test tube. That was smaller than usual.

that's NUTS MY DUDE OMG, also hi been a while bud

[Manitobant]

I have a few stories

One time I caught a formica aserva queen while out at my local fish store. I had nowhere to put her so I had to keep the aggressive acid spraying queen in my hand while my mom drove 30 mins across the city to get home.


Another time when I was at math tutoring I found 5 myrmica brevispinosa queens. I had to improvise and stuck them in a plastic cup with paper taped to the top for the hour long class and the 30 minute car ride home.

When I was on my way to see IT chapter 2 I found a formica limata queen in my hair. I had to think fast as the bus was just coming down the street and luckily my dad had a pen on him so he took out the inside parts so I had a hollowed out pen to stick the queen in for the almost 3 hour movie. Sadly, she died a few days after, presumably infertile.

Edited by Manitobant, February 2 2020 - 3:53 PM.

[TennesseeAnts]

I found a Lasius neoniger queen stuck in a pool during a swim practice so I had to keep her in my goggles (while I had them on) for 2 hours til the end of practice. Needless to say my eye was very irritated. The queen turned out to have never mated in the first place as well.

Edited by Ant_Dude2908, February 2 2020 - 6:22 PM.

[Da_NewAntOnTheBlock]

My dad almost caught a queen with a fishing net (it was a costume party and we went for a walk because it was a boring day). It sadly was a few millimeters away from making it into the net   

the fishing net was the size of his hand though (it was tiny), sorry for not saying that in the first place lol

[kgollehon]

How could I forget, the first queen and I ever caught, a Formica fusca! Found her outside of an AT&T store and cupped her in my hands for 20 minutes before putting her in a yeti cup and taking that cup all the way on the train to Los Angeles!

[Vendayn]

Probably my mouth. A few actually lived.

 

Easy enough really. Solenopsis molesta mating flights (at least down in san diego, I imagine same elsewhere) are so low to the ground you can walk right through the balls of lots of flying alates. They were actually pretty annoying with their flights. They'd get in hair, clothes everywhere. And the alates had a tiny but barely noticeable sting to them, but it was so minor didn't really bother me. I could feel their little tiny pricks though, just barely but I noticed. My mom noticed too.

Edited by Vendayn, February 6 2020 - 3:47 PM.

[PacificNorthWestern]

oh hold on lets see: A basketball shoe, a water bottle, my hands, a stick, a pile of dirt. Yea the queen buried into the ground, so i grabbed the dirt clump from my backyard and brought it into my garage where I was able to get the queen out of the dirt.

[Ants_Dakota]

Probably an old beer bottle. I was camping and had nothing else, so i looked around, and lo-and-behold! 

[Da_NewAntOnTheBlock]

wow, did she survive?

[Ants_Dakota]

well, they survived the crazy trip(there were actually two of them), and did not get drunk, but unfortunately they did not lay any eggs.