Why are Ants Eating my Toothpaste???

This is gross, but it's been going on for far too long and I need answers: if you were an ant, WHY, in the name of all that is good and holy and pure, would you choose to eat my toothpaste??? It has no nutritional value! There is nothing in it for an ant-y digestive system! Leave the green goo alone and go find another hobby!

I was somewhere in Vietnam when I ran out of travel-sized American toothpaste. I popped into the first little store I could find, and the grizzled woman behind the counter handed me a neon green box labeled "Colgate".

"Yum, spearmint!" I foolishly said, and paid with a smile. Unfortunately, the green actually turned out to mean LIME flavor. Every morning and night since that fateful purchase, the citric acid tang tap dances badly around my tastebuds. I shudder and finish the job, reminding myself I hate waste and will not stoop to trashing a half-used product.

And yet, the taste that I abhor, the ants of Southeast Asia seem to adore. Every morning when I wake up after failing to thoroughly rinse the sink, I walk in to a raging ant party. If I had a magnifying glass, I bet I could see the little punks slugging plastic kegger cups of paste with drunken abandon. Shoot-- I bet they're even wearing little togas!

And they work fast. To take this photo, I just had to put down a sample Colgate bloop and wait five minutes. Yipes!

Anyway, I'm off now to buy cheap clothes at the Chiang Mai Sunday market with massage school buddies (and find mango sticky rice!). This should give the ants a little privacy to go wild on the sink dance floor. They just better be done gyrating to Britney by the time I come home!