Category: default || By jt3y

I was out of town for my annual geek pilgrimage to Hamvention --- the swallows return each spring to San Juan Capistrano, the buzzards to Hinckley, and the radio buffs to Dayton --- about which more in a few days, whether or not you care.

But there is something more immediate to report. Let the record show that chemical weapons were unleashed on Sunday. The first battle began at about 3:15 p.m. and lasted for 45 minutes. The second began at 8:45 p.m. and lasted a half-hour. The targets were enemy insurgents, and the place was my little quarter-acre of FHA-financed American Dream in North Bittyburg.

Yes, friends --- I've got ants. My reaction was not quite the same as that of the housewives in all of those "Tom & Jerry" cartoons --- standing on a chair and squealing --- but it was close.

I got home early Sunday morning, slept for a few hours, and then unpacked the car. At about 3 p.m., I called someone about some side work I may be doing. He told me to come out and meet with him in North Versailles right away. I said I'd be there in 30 minutes. I flipped on the bathroom light --- and there they were, dozens of giant, fanged beasts, their shiny black carapaces gleaming evilly in the harsh incandescent light.

OK, would you believe three? I stomped two by the sink. The third tried to make a break for the commode, but I got him, too, as he crawled up the side.

Ants! Eek! I'm not particularly squeamish. Show me a spider, and I'm fine. (I squash them, but they don't particularly bother me.) Even snakes and worms don't faze me. But for some reason, I don't like ants. Yes, they're supposed to be industrious, but how do we know what they're really up to? They live in colonies, for goodness sakes. Who knows what they've been plotting down there for all of these years?

If I had ants in the bathroom --- which doesn't have a window --- they had to be coming from somewhere. With great trepidation, I looked into the kitchen, and the floors were (pardon the expression) crawling. There, on my nice clean tile floor, were ants everywhere, wriggling in under the back door.

I should pause now and point out that about an hour before, my neighbor was out cutting his grass. I strongly suspect that he hit an anthill, or at the very least the noise and vibration of the mower freaked the little buggers out. I did my best Michael Flatley impression all over the kitchen floor, and then ran downstairs. Last year, I had done some preventive spraying for carpenter ants, and I had about a half-gallon of poison left. I used to dose the back porch and the ground underneath. And still they kept coming. These weren't carpenter ants --- these were demon ants from hell!

Or maybe common pavement ants. It's hard to tell.

Keep in mind I had promised to be in North Versailles within a half-hour. That was 20 minutes previous. Down the hill I went to the House of Rancid Lunchmeat for ant baits and Raid. I'm not convinced that ant baits do a darned thing. In fact, I think they're an aphrodisiac for ants. And as for the Raid, it's perfumed, for crying out loud, so how good could it work? It must be what the ants roll in when they're getting amorous.

Nevertheless, I baited the kitchen and the back porch with ant bait and sprayed a perimeter around the windows and doors, and I stomped on several more ants in the process. Then I went to my meeting.

On the way home, I did something I rarely do --- stopped at Wal-Mart --- and bought two pounds of ant powder ("guaranteed to kill ants") and some more ant baits. I salted the ground all the way around the house with powder and spiked the ant baits down everywhere I found a crack or crevice. (I also angered Mrs. Robin Red-Breast, who's built a nest on my porch. She came swooping out and chirped angrily at me for several minutes as I worked.)

As I finished my anticide, the neighbor from the other side came out with a bag of garbage to put into the trash can. "Can I ask you a question?" I said. "Are you getting any ants right now?"

"Those big black ones?" she said. "Oh, yeah, we get them every spring. I had an exterminator out. He called them concrete ants. He said just put some baits and spray down. It worked. They'll go away in a few days."

She turned to go back into the house. I had just started to relax when she said something that made shivers run up and down my spine: "Wait 'til you get the mice. We get those every year, too. I got 13 last summer."

Do you think it's possible to live year-round in a dirigible?