Ants Invade iBook

xkranda writes "Seriously ... this is off the Apple Discussions site. Apparently some poor sap's iBook became infested with ants. All I have to say is ew! Ew! Ew! Ew!!!"

Comments

The original post

[DarkSkiesAhead]

from the apple discussion board:

Has anyone had this problem? I hope not . . . After the first rain of the year, the ants outside were restless (and homeless). My wife had left her ibook on the mantle charging overnight. The next morning we noticed a large number of ants milling around it. Upon inspection we discovered ants crawling in and out of every hole in the computer. I grabbed my can of compressed air and started blowing! To my horror hundreds of ants started pouring out carrying eggs! I knew this was bad. I took the computer out to the garage and completely disassembled the thing layer by layer . My stomach turned when I exposed the main circuit board and saw thousand of ant and eggs (and a queen or two), writhing across every inch! Argh! After several hours with a vacuum and a can of air I finally got the thing clean. I put it back together (only a few extra screws) and luckily it works fine. Any theories on why ants would decide to move an entire colony into an ibook? Warmth? Sweet circuit boards? I think they were attempting to colonize the ultimate frontier: cyberspace.

Re:Ants and electronics

[NeuroManson]

Not to mention that to some insects, the materials used to laminate circuit boards and some plastics that compose the electronics, are amazingly tasty... There was/is a lot of problems, for example, with cockroaches eating the plastic in wiring and circuitry...

Re:Plastics?

[TrinSF]

Oooo! I know the answer to this one, because it happens to some kinds of dolls, too.

The answer many common plastics make use of "food" components, including corn solids and syrup. Here's a listof things made with corn, including plastics.

Plastics "separate" over time, with components migrating to the surface. It's the organic parts of plastic that cause problems like mold/fungus on plastics, as well as make them tasty for bugs.

Re:Plastics?

[Reziac]

Mice are also attracted to aging plastics, probably for the same reason -- after a certain stage, the plastic smells like "food" again.

One guy on the Apple forum was wondering if he should remove the ants or just kill 'em in place (by freezing or whatever) -- definitely remove them. Ants are quite acidic, and a pile of dead decomposing ants WILL corrode susceptible components. I've also seen computer cases pretty well rusted from accumulations of dead cockroaches.