The average hospital houses the types of people you'd expect. Surgeons, doctors, nurses, patients. You know, the usual. But what you wouldn't expect is an army of ants marching in and suspending surgeries, making everyone feel quite antsy...
As reported by the New York Post, the Carman Memorial Hospital in Manitoba, Canada, is experiencing a pretty strange problem. The issue arises when the ants manage to get into operating rooms. They were seen quite literally crawling under doors and moving around hallways.
Operating rooms are meant to be super clean and sterile. After all, if you're opening somebody up, you don't want anything at all to be there. Whether that be pathogens, little specks of dust, or even, in this case, ants.
And so they've had to put quite a lot of operations on hold so they can fix the ant problem. Even life-saving surgeries have had to be cancelled, just out of the risk of the ants.
A spokesperson for Southern Health, the company that operates the Carman Memorial Hospital, explained what the staff had to do. The spokesperson explained the staff "must take precautions to remedy the situation in an effort to avoid any further surgical cancellations and any chance that the ant problem may get worse."
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It's not a complete shutdown, because some procedures haven't been affected by the ants. And the company really wanted to make it clear that the ants being there wasn't a sign of anything more concerning. They said that the pests were "simply seeking food sources inside buildings, as ants are known to do."
And that makes sense, especially for the type of pest responsible for the shutdown. The company explained that they're called pavement ants.
According to Michigan State University, pavement ants, or Tetramorium immigrans, are small brown ants that enjoy sweet and greasy foods. They have a sting, which, while it hurts, is pretty harmless.
As the name suggests, they're probably the type of pest you're familiar with. They're the ants that might make their way into your home, looking for something sweet to forage.
In any case, we hope that the hospital reopens soon.
