Amazing Ants

There is something quite frustrating about some local South Indian farmers I’ve met.

But first, this is the largest ant mound I’ve seen in India (or anywhere else for that matter):

amazing-ant

I spotted this one just outside of Tiruchappalli (or more commonly called Trichy, as the locals call it). If you don’t know it, Trichy is famous for its white rice – and the locals say the taste is so good because of the special properties of the soil.  So, I guess it would only be natural that the ants enjoy this great soil and build super-mounds like this one!

But what’s so frustrating about some local South Indian farmers?  I could never find any farmers (or locals for that matter) who referred to these as “ant mounds” or “termite mounds.”  If you ask the locals, they will always tell you they are “snake houses.”  OK, probably they make nice homes for snakes – I don’t dispute that.  But it always makes me wonder if they know who the builder was, not just some of the tenants!

You can see my other Amazing Ants photographs here:

A German bunker in France?

While driving through Lorraine, France, I discovered many, many bunkers that looked identical, like this:

luneville-bunker-small

But as you may know, Lorraine is quite far from the German border and the famous Maginot Line, which was a series of bunkers to defend France against the German army in World War II.

So what are these bunkers, and why were they built?

After a bit of Internet research, I discovered that this area in Lorraine was the previous boundary between France and Germany, dating back the FIRST world war, World War I.  In fact, France invaded Germany here, and the Germans built a series of fortifications to defend against the French.  The previous link shows a terrific map of the border:

battle-of-lorraine

On the one hand, it is too bad that historical artifacts like the ones I saw are not labelled, so visitors can learn why they are there.  But on the other hand, with the help of the Internet a little “amateur archeology” is fun . . . and I didn’t have to dig a test pit or extend the trench.

(PS. There are still some interesting mysteries. For example, why were all the bunkers identical?  Probably to make building them fast and easy – but did the German army have a “bunker kit” that distributed the materials to the various construction sites? Or, were the bunkers all built by the same team?)