Army & Navy – Ants

At a Georgia air base a harassed captain sat down and wrote this note: “To: Medical Supply Officer: “1) Following telephone information from your office that you were unable to issue carbon disulphide for use in this office in ant control, and following receipt of your letter listing insect repellents furnished by your office, request was made of Quartermaster for carbon disulphide for use by this office in ant control. We were informed by Quartermaster that they could only issue such preparation if the ant to be exterminated was in the building. If it was outside the building, the issuance of such preparation properly should come from Engineering. It is difficult to determine the intentions of the ants we are attempting to exterminate.

Some live inside and wander outside for food, while some live outside and forage inside for food. It is a rather difficult problem to determine which ant comes from without and is what you might call an Engineering ant, and which ant comes from within and would be called a Quartermaster ant. Some of our ants appear to be going in circles and others apparently are wandering at random with no thought of destination. Such ant tactics are very confusing and could result in a Quartermaster ant being exterminated by an Engineering poison, or an Engineering ant exterminated by a Quartermaster poison, which would be contrary to the letter of regulations and would probably lead to an extensive investigation and lengthy letter of explanation.

“2) In view of the fact that Quartermaster-issued poison has been found to kill an ant just as dead as Engineering-issued poison—and vice versa—request is made that your office draw identical poisons for issue to this office from both Engineering and Quartermaster, and mix same so that there will be no way of knowing which poison killed the ant—the assumption being that no well-bred G.I. ant would eat other than poison issued through proper channels to final destination, which destination being the aforementioned dead or dying ant.”