Ants, ants, ants!

OK. Here is the flora and fauna report from The Hermitage. Deer spotted heading towards the road this week. The biggest live beetle I have ever seen came down my chimney. It was like the Santa Claus of beetles. It was brownish yellow, half dead and not very pretty. I didn't covet it. I let it go. Spiders? Check. Orb web, wolf spiders, tiny ones that resemble black widows, but aren't. Squirrels and bunnies at the bird feeder. Blue Jays, Ruby throated hummingbirds, goldfinches, cardinals, cow birds, crows, Blue Herons in Portsmouth, Small black tadpoles, who were almost completely dry until I prayed for rain, tufted titmice, sparrows, black capped chickadees, red bellied woodpecker, frogs (heard but not seen this week), Annual cicadas, (the periodic cicadas are all dead, well the adults are), flying ants in swarms by the Ohio in Portsmouth. A gold fish in the Ohio river. Cockroaches, gnats, musca domestica, various culex, melanogaster, vespidae, water striders, bumblebees, even a couple of honeybees, which is a good sign. Groundhog! (Ever watch "How to Succeed in Business?") A couple of undetermined downy or ladder backed woodpeckers, robins, evidence of moles, crane flies but not as many as earlier in the summer, lightning bugs, chipmunk, horses, tiny ants, huge ants, aphids, treehoppers, biting flies I felt but didn't see, poison ivy, grass, ferns, boat tailed grackels, starlings, mourning doves, some bird with a blue head and a cardinal like bill. sowbugs, bean beetles, and many many more.