Battlefield Burial Detail and Body Count

When I was a kid/young adult during the Vietnam Conflict, television news would report almost daily the number of American soldiers that died that day, and the enemy body count.  Always, always, it seemed that there were more enemy dead than Americans, and that was encouraging.  Then I would read somewhere that the North Vietnam government was reporting figures that were skewed the other way--more American casualties than Vietnamese.  Which to believe?

I asked my mom about it.  She told me that it is not an uncommon practice for numbers to be embellished just to keep up morale.  Whaaaat??  MY country wouldn't lie about stuff like that!  Then I think I read somewhere that bodies in other wars were sometimes hastily buried and/or hidden so as not to encourage the enemy with the number of The Kill.  Lesson learned.

And now, I'm here to tell you that the same thing applies to the insect world.  Every year about this time, I get a minor army invasion of big black ants in the house.  It doesn't usually last very long but is annoying.  I don't know where they come from or what to do about them, but I smash each one I see.  Yesterday seemed to be the biggest influx, around the pantry area of my kitchen.  Throughout the day, I think I probably killed 18 of the insidious things.  I didn't clean them up, figuring there would be more and I would sweep them up when their carcasses were dry today.

I know from experience out on my patio that the ants have their own battlefield burial detail.  Step on any bug out there and leave it, and as soon as the ants find the body, they gather to remove it.  I've seen little bitty ants hauling carcasses many times their own size.  I'm fairly certain that the bodies go back to the nest to provide food for the troops (the little cannibals!), but in the house, I figure that burial detail would have to be mine.

Thus, when I got up this morning, I figured that my first job would be to count the bodies and sweep them up...but...they were all gone!  In fact, I caught one hapless ant struggling to remove the last of the dead bodies (a fatality himself, now), and caught on to their tactics.  The little buggers were trying to skew the body count so I wouldn't know how many of them had passed vs. how many were still lying in wait to attack my house.  Ha! All it did was reassure me that I could kill as many as I want and they will take care of their own burial detail.  I win!

If all is fair in love and war--and this is clearly war--I'll just keep on with the current battle tactics. Works for me!