Sidewalk Warning

This is old news, but it's funny enough to revisit...

I love digital cameras for many reasons, but automatically dated photo files have to be one of the major advantages.
I'm one of those people, before digital photography, who developed a roll of film, looked at the pictures, and then dumped them into a box with the intention of putting them into a photo album at some future, unspecified time. That future, unspecified time never seemed to arrive, and I added to my intentions with thoughts of flawless chronology and scrap-booking artistry, which, of course, only pushed that elusive unspecified time further into the future.
Ha!
And then enter the digital camera. Pictures are automatically developed as soon as I upload them so I can look and dump even more quickly. Only instead of into a box, I dump them into a virtual file folder, so I'm not collecting dust and taking up space (or not much) and I feel much more organized because of it. AND the picture automatically tells me when it was taken so that my dreams of flawless chronology have finally come true!
So, for that reason alone, I am able to say that this picture was taken in April, almost exactly three months ago:

It's Dozer's finger pointing at a crack in the sidewalk.
Why?
Well, before I get to that, I should point out the white crud on the fingernail and knuckle.
It's drywall mud.
Prior to automatic picture dating, I would have looked at the drywall mud on the little hand in this picture and then tried to figure out the approximate time period of drywall mudding and at which stage I would have welcomed help from the kids and then used that information to figure out when this picture was taken.
Not very efficient, huh? (I hope I'm not the only one who does stupid stuff like that).

He's pointing at an ant house.
It doesn't qualify as an ant hill, because it's not big enough, so the kids named it the ant house.
Actually, there are two entrances (or an entrance and an exit?) and they did a good job of drawing attention to the two holes with sidewalk chalk:

"Watch out for Ant homes."
This message was intended to deter pedestrians from unknowingly stepping on the ants.

With arrows added for clarity:


And then they decided that the little ants needed some help with their food supply:


Potato chips and sandwich crusts.



The care, feeding, and observation of these ants kept both Dozer and Screech occupied for most of the day.
Of course, I got to watch for a while, too, and I have to say that it is very satisfying and fascinating to sit on the sidewalk and watch those tiny little critters team up and tear up hunks of food into pieces that will fit into their ant home.

So, don't forget, "Please be nice to ants:"


Update:
Now that summer is here and the sun is hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, the ants are nowhere to be found and the kids have been forced to find other forms of entertainment....