Scout’s honor? Well, not really.

I was never a Girl Scout for several reasons: I hate uniforms, especially ugly brown ones, and I don’t enjoy enforced gatherings and/or making weird crafty things to earn useless badges.

Don’t even get me started on how much I would LOATHE being forced to go door to door or stand in front of a grocery store to hawk cookies. That’s a firm and hard NO from me, at any age.

Yeah, I’m not a joiner of anything; I guess I’m a lone wolf by nature.

So…when I noticed a couple ants here and there in my bathroom, on the wall and in the shower — not a steady stream of them but a few that seemed to be aimlessly wandering around, I was perplexed.

A little research taught me something I had never known–these seemingly random ants are actually SCOUTS.

Scout ants are lone worker ants sent out by a colony to explore unfamiliar terrain, locate food sources, and assess potential nesting sites or threats, however, they chose the wrong location here because there’s no food in my bathroom!

They wander independently away from the nest using keen senses of smell and visual cues. When food is located, they consume a small sample and head straight back to the nest. Before they go, they leave a chemical scent called a pheromone trail on their return trip so other worker ants can follow the path to the food.

As fascinating as that info IS, I don’t want them anywhere near me. I get totally freaked out if I think an ant could possibly crawl on me in any way.

I don’t even care if the spiritual meaning of a scout ant represents a call to explore uncharted territory, to trust our inner instincts, or even to pioneer new paths before bringing others along.

I can admire their industrious nature, but stay away from me.

If you’re wondering what ultimately happened to these scout ants, the short answer is that these good little scouts are no longer able to bring back any info to their colony, which isn’t very animal-ioving of me, but I have my limits.

Let’s raise a glass to honor those brave, selfless little soldiers. RIP.

Photo found on Pinterest