creepy crawly...

... invasion. An army of ants. In the cupboards, on the counter tops, running amok. I did  not want to spray: it's greasy, deadly, poisonous. But I did want to get rid of the ants. Which is really unlikely, as I am convinced they are living in the walls of the house! Got any ideas? I sure don't, but still want them to go away. I can by-and-large live in harmony with small creatures, and don't go out of my way to stomp on bugs. They serve a purpose, and other than the big fat nasty grasshoppers I will chase across the yard to smoosh, I usually don't alter the food chain.

Several years ago, when it got really cold, there were some wee black ones swarming in around the sink in the kitchen. I bought the little plastic traps filled with some sticky substance, placing them strategically around areas where I saw the problem,  to replace when they are filled with corpses. The invaders eventually disappeared.

I was not fooled. Not in the least. I knew they were still there: settling in, getting comfortable, building a high-rise behind the sheet rock, between the studs. The colony has had lots of time to grow. I can envision a huge nest, reaching deep into the soil, like the things you see on wildlife shows - those gi-normous ant mounds on the African savanna, bigger than a house.  Maybe reaching to the other side of the planet, impervious to the heat the science textbooks report at the core of the earth.

When I came in a week ago, they were all over the stove where someone had left a piece of waxed paper after covering food in the microwave. I cleaned that up, but knew we needed to call for pest control service. The guy came and poked around, sprayed, chatted a while and left. Pretty obvious he treated the visible 'symptoms' and made no effort to get to the root of the problem. Because when he came back, very chatty and sprayed yesterday there were many more than I saw last week. Swarming all in the cupboards, having a party in the peanut butter jar, which they apparently find very enticing.

Interesting tidbit: the pest control guy asked if I had Windex. So I handed over the squirt bottle and he sprayed in the cupboard where the peanut butter lives, saying ammonia will kill them. Of course there were ten thousand little ant bodies left for me to clean up, which I did before replacing items back on the shelf. I know they are still in there, lurking. The Pest guy even said they could be under the slab, keeping warm and dry. Argghhhh...