Photo by Bill Green Steve Chambers hosts a webcam that shows the movement of ants in a plastic ant farm his has in his home office. StevesAntFarm.com has had more than 1.2 million visitors over the years since he started. He is holding the ant farm with an image of the farm on his computer screen behind.

StevesAntFarm.com has had 300 visitors in the last couple of days and more than 1.2 million visitors over the years, Chambers said.

"I started this in 1994," 54-year-old Chambers said. "How it came about was, a company made a product called a Quikcam."

Quickcam was the first computer camera, Chambers explained. He was trying to come up with a way to use the product. He decided to feature a classic-style ant farm similar to one he had as a boy.

"People come visit the virtual ant farm. They reminisce when they were a kid," Chambers said. "Kids are fascinated by the ants. It's sort of a scientific toy."

Viewers have called the site both weird and wacky. An entomologist once sent Chambers an ant poem.

"At that point I wanted to take my e-mail off the site," Chambers said.

He orders the ants from a company that sends them to him in the mail, he said. The ants come in a tube.

Chambers is a web guru. He and his wife Lynn Van Der Veer, designed NASA.gov in 1995, he said.

"That was the first website we ever designed after founding our graphic design company in 1988," Chambers said.

Chambers, a Rockville native, met his wife at an advertising agency in Rockville.

"She had a place in D.C. I moved in with her, then we bought a house in D.C.," Chambers said. They moved to Frederick County in 2002. Their property on Gambrill Park Road, about four miles north of Gambrill State Park, includes accommodations for two horses.

"The only reason we moved was to get a piece of property near public land to ride the horses on," Chambers said.

The ant farm, in contrast, requires very little space, Chambers said. The container sits on his desk.