My First Leaf Cutting Ant Colony

[Acromyrmexbob]

1991. I bought it from Dr David Straddling of Exeter University. It was quite large when I got it and I put if in a huge tank with a moat around the top. The tank was 1200mm high, 750mm wide and 750mm long. It took about a half tonne of soil to fill. I had this outside in my garden shed. After 2 years my colony was vast. I had ropes all over the shed. One weekend in the middle of summer I was in London with my family for the weeken. When we returned on the Monday evening there was a loud, angry banging at my door. I opened it to find my neighbour, red faced, growling at me. Apparently the ants had managed to bridge the moat because their rate of digging had literally filled it within a few hours of me leaving. They had crossed the moat, travelled under the door and formed a 30cm wide foraging trail next door onto the neighbours vegetable patch. He was unaware I had these ants in the shed. Confused by what he had discovered my neighbour then got a brush and attacked the column of ants whereupon the colony responded by sending the soldiers onto the brush and up the handle towards my neighbour who then retreated indoors and considered calling the environmental health and pest control but did not because he figured I must have had these ants as pets. (He knew my interest in this type of thing) He insisted I come with him. I went to his garden and stood with him staring at the literally bare earth where his vegetable patch had once, so recently, been. I agreed I would get rid of my ants and donated them to Edinburgh Butterfly World. I look back on that and laugh now but back then it was horrible. The sheer size and power of this colony which, I guess probably numbered around 500000 ants, was awe inspiring. They literally chased the guy into his house. The brush was still lying where he had dropped it. It was several years later I got my next colonies, after travelling to the exact spot where Dr Straddling had collected my first colony, Trinidad.