Ants in our InterWebs

For years we have had our modem (the device that allows our computers to talk to the Internet) and our wireless router (the device that allows our computers to talk to each other, and to talk to the modem over the airwaves) hanging from a hook in HomoDommi's studio.  His computer didn't have the ability to do wireless stuff, so he was wired into the router, but the rest of the computers in the house were wireless capable.

For years, whenever the weather was heavy and rainy, our Internet connection has gone weird, the signal veering from strong to nonexistent to strong again throughout the day.

A couple of weeks ago, when the kids were still here, on a heavy, rainy day, suddenly (after months of nary a problem) we couldn't access the Internet.  I walked out to the studio (which is now being used as a storage room) to check on the devices.  All the lights were on and green and not blinking -- all systems go.  But there was no signal on the computer. So I decided to reboot the system, just to see what happens.

I took the modem off its hook on the wall to be able to reach the power plug and remove it.  That's when I noticed that the modem was crawling with tiny sugar ants.  I looked down the wires -- the ants were swarming over the outlet that the modem and router were plugged into, climbing up and down on the wires.  Setting down the modem on a nearby empty bookshelf, I grabbed some ant killer and sprayed the outlet (hoping the dampness of the spray would short circuit the power).  Stuck the plug into a different, unant-y outlet and picked up the modem to power it up.  But there on the bookshelf where it had sat, almost outlining the silhouette of the device, were hundreds more, tiny sugar ants.

They were in the modem.  Long story short, we ended up having to take apart the modem, and found therein two squirming nests (imagine that the blobs of tan in the center and on the corner of the green motherboard in the photo were writhing with movement), and thousands upon thousands of drones carrying tiny eggs in orderly panic out out of both of them, aiming for escape - elsewhere.

We certainly didn't want to spray the modem, sure that the ant killer would kill the motherboard, too.  HomoDommi tapped and blew and brushed them all onto a board (at which point we did kill them, trying to save the Queen to show to Girl-Child but accidentally crushing her as we tried to separate her from the rest).  We reassembled the modem, crossed our fingers, and rebooted the whole system.  It has worked flawlessly since then.

They must have been attracted to the heat. We don't know how long the ants have been there -- has there been an ant-rush to the hot queen's side causing every Internet outage we've had before, or is this new? The outlet was under a desk when HomoDommi was still using the space, so he might never have seen them. He had occasional ant problems elsewhere in the studio, but had never tracked them back here.

My karma took a bad hit that day. It ended with the thousands of ant-lives, and it began with the brutal death of a large rat that Boy-Child happened to notice coming out of a hole in our front garden. It was the largest rat I've seen in our yard, probably the progenitor of the baby rats that the cats have been bringing inside (or catching inside? No!) -- big enough that Tasha was watching it warily from a distance (about a foot long, not counting its tail).  Luckily, I had a snow shovel -- and, to be honest, I had Mike the Contractor present, who offered to provide masculine upper body strength to the task (HomoDommi wasn't home at the time).  At least the rat died quickly.  And we still have to decide what to do about that hole.