Winged Ant Sex Festival

Today was so beautiful outside that we opened up all the windows and doors and let some fresh air inside. It was a tiny bit cold, but it was totally nice anyway.
After dinner however, we started noticing a bunch of bugs in the house. They were ugly little things with wings, and I freaked out thinking they were termites. Then we found some ants by the front door having a party with these winged creatures, so I was pretty sure they were just winged ants. I decided to look up termites on the internet just to be sure, and I was right. They weren't termites.

Every so often after a few days of rain, ant colonies will send out swarms of winged ants. The winged ones are the reproductive ones of the family and, if they're lucky, other nearby colonies will have sent out their horny, winged members at the same time. For one single day, a winged-ant fuck frenzy occurs, after which the mated females go off and start new colonies while the exhausted males drop dead. Literally. The female eventually loses her wings, and the no longer used wing muscles provide nutrients for her during the early stages of colony development. Luckily for us, very few of these new queens are able to successfully survive this phase and never actually establish a new colony.

Creepy but cool. I totally feel like ants are crawling all over me right now. Yuck.

Oh, and by the way, this is my 200th post!