a further puzzle

while the mystery of the big dead ants remains unsolved, a new one has sprung up. or dropped down, as it were.

a few days ago, i went out onto the balcony to water the geraniums and noticed that at the opposite end of my balcony from the ant graveyard -- which, thankfully, seems to have stopped replenishing itself -- was a large collection of what appeared to be more big dead ants.

but when i stepped closer i saw that the black things weren't big dead ant but, rather, what looked like droppings of some sort.

i'm assuming bird droppings, since there's no way any mammal could get to that spot and poop over and over and over again in what is basically a 10-square-inch area.

but here's the thing -- there's nowhere for birds to actually perch above the spot where the pile of poo has accumulated. there's roof over the area.

so it's sort of the equivalent of finding a pile of bird poop in the middle of your bedroom -- WHERE ARE THE BIRDS SITTING IN ORDER TO HAVE POOP FALL IN THAT SPOT REPEATEDLY?!

are they clinging to the bricks on the wall, pooping, and then moving on? if so, why that exact spot? based on the volume of the wee turds, it would have had to have been several birds over the course of several days. this was no drive-by pooping.

and then YB posited: maybe it's bats.

bats?

again, just sitting there (there's no nest or anything anywhere) on a nocturnal pit stop, pooping and then flapping away come daylight?

WHERE IS THIS POOP COMING FROM?

UPDATE: i have just googled, and it could very well be bat poop from bats that roost/visit at night.

a puzzle

a month or so ago, i put two pink potted geraniums on my balcony. they're in yellow pots sitting on red plates, on the floor, and they get tons of sun so they now have many blooms.

and, inexplicably, ever since, my balcony seems to be collecting a LOT of big, dead ants.

at first, a few weeks ago, i looked outside and saw what i thought were little clumps of soil swirling around the balcony floor in the wind.

then, a couple of days later and after they started to increase in number, i went outside and looked closer: they weren't little clumps of soil, after all, but the bodies of big, dead ants.

yet, despite this veritable killing ground, i failed to see any LIVE ants. only dead ones, as though – based on their numbers – someone had somehow been sweeping their wee corpses off the building roof and onto my balcony (which i know is not the case).

and, every day, there'd be a few more.

where are these bodies coming from?

are big, fat ants crawling up the walls of the building so they can die on my balcony?

are they leaping to their deaths from the roof?

is there some bird living in the nearby trees who carries them over and drops them off because it thinks this is HILARIOUS?

i have no idea.