“Do ants sleep?” I wondered out loud. Charlie and me had just sat down to lunch Saturday (grilled cheese
and tomato soup), and there was another one, grabbing our attention by crawling behind the salt shaker.
See, every year about this time we seem to get ants in the house. It just wouldn’t be spring without them. Once summer goes into full swing, they’re gone, but gosh, they’re a nuisance while they’re here. We can never figure out where they’re getting in. The screen door? Some window? Who knows?
Now if Scamp was more diligent about eating all his food when it’s served, like other dogs, that would help. Instead, he seems to put all his energy into begging for human food whenever we sit down to eat. He only does this on my side of the table, of course, because I’m the weakest link.
I don’t know if it’s the change of season or the ant traps that finally make ‘em disappear, but it’s always a relief. Ants are just so busy and determined. We don’t get a ton of ‘em. But just enough to be a bother.
I start to get up from the kitchen table and Charlie goes, “Hold on a minute. Before you look it up, let’s make a guess.”
Remember the olden days, before The Google (as we call it), where you’d wonder about something, then shrug and move on? Because unless you went to the public library to look it up or the Encyclopedia Britannica (if you were lucky enough to have a set), you’d never know. And that was okay. Just another of life’s little mysteries.
Or you could spend a whole evening with friends, trying off and on, to remember that movie, you know the one I mean, with Clark Gable and, oh, who was the actress…?” And you never do figure it out until you wake up in the middle of the night yelling, “Claudette Colbert! It Happen One Night!” like you were on Jeopardy, for God sake. The next morning, you’d have to call your friends and tell them, and everyone would be relieved that that dire problem is solved. Kids totally don’t know what that’s like.
“What do you think, Charlie? Do ants sleep?”
Charlie stares off into space, pondering. “I’m going to say yes, they do. I think they take shifts, like down to the mill.”
“Makes sense. I think they sleep, too, but not much.”
“Every creature needs to zonk out at some point, don’t they?”
“I know I do.”
Only then did I stand up and walk over to my phone, and consult The Google.
“Drumroll, please.” Charlie obliges by drumming on the table with his pointer fingers. “We were right!
Ants do sleep!”
“I knew it!”
“But get this: the average ant takes about 250 naps a day!”
“Huh?”
“Granted, each one lasts only a little over a minute, so they sleep almost 5 hours a day, just not all at once.”
“Interesting. But how do they know if the ant is asleep?”
“Doesn’t say. I guess they stop moving. Weird thing to study.”
“Yup. ‘What do you do for work?’ ‘I watch ants sleep.’”
“What are you up to this afternoon?” 
“Going to the dump. You?”
“Vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom. Then what?”
And together we say, “Taking a nap!”
That’s it for now. Catch you on the flip side!
Hear Ida Tell It: Do Ants Sleep?