cANT handle it

There was a time in America, a more innocent time, before we were all wired for sound and obsessed with electronic entertainment, when a two simple pieces of plastic, a little sand and a few industrious ants could provide hours of entertainment for children.

Whatever. There was also a time when gas was thirty cents a gallon, but we won’t be seeing that again either. As far as now is concerned, ants are a royal pain in the ass.

It’s summer, and it’s hot and humid. Apparently ants don’t like it anymore than I do, because they’re busy looking for a place to cool off. The problem is they’ve chosen my place.

It seems to be relegated to a few, about 5 at a time that I see in the kitchen, and one or two at a time in the main bathroom. I know what you’re thinking and thanks, but I don’t need to be reminded that for every ant I see, there are probably thousands that I don’t.

Denial is a river that runs right through my living room.

Anyway, right now it’s not unmanageable. I’ve made the trip to Loew’s, bought the ant traps and have strategically placed them in those rooms. And when I say placed them, what I mean is my wife has actually put them down where they need to be.

Truth be told, I have a little issue with ants (what other size issue would I have with them?).

For the most part, bugs don’t bug me. I can deal with spiders, bees, roaches, junebugs, wasps (the kind who sting and the kind who wear button down shirts), ladybugs, dragonflies, worms, whatever. But the one thing I cannot deal with is ants.

It has to do with a giant, sci-fi invasion we had in our house about ten years ago.

Under the heading of no good deed goes unpunished, I had the exterior of our house sprayed for ants after I'd seen a trail of them milling around.

What we didn’t know at the time was there was not one, but two gigantic forty-year old colonies under our house. When they couldn’t get out to do their shopping and take the little ants to school, they came inside.

We tried everything to stop them. And again, when I say we I mean the wife.

I think I completely shut down the morning I walked in the kitchen, looked at the back wall and asked, “Why is that wall black? And why is it moving?”

There were four, three-inch wide trails of thousands of ants coming in the back door, across the floor, up the refrigerator, down the refrigerator, across the counter, in and out of the sink and eventually to our coffee maker, where they were crawling on top of each other inside that clear water level indicator. They were trying to move the entire colony inside.

It was actually a few days before it reached this point, and I was trying desperately to avoid spraying inside the house. But when I saw the kitchen that morning, only two words came to mind.

Nuke ‘em.

After clearing out the bottom shelves in the kitchen, we moved in to the Marriott Residence Inn for three days and two nights while the pest control people had at it. When we got home, we still found thousands of ants, but we found them in the best condition possible.

Say it with me: dead.

Since then, we've had the exterior of the house sprayed quarterly and haven't had any problem. I'm hoping the few I've seen are just a few that've been trapped inside after our quarterly treatment and will die off quickly.

Because if it gets any worse, it's going to be hell on the wife.