14 July 2006

the scene of carnage

Just as a disclaimer: We are not dirty people. I promise.

Last night before I went to bed, I happened to be in the kitchen. My eyes happened upon the candy jar - once full of skittles, now holding only about 10. The decrease in skittle number, however, was not what was disturbing to me. Instead, the cause for concern was the moving black blanket that covered every candy in the jar. Ants. Teeny tiny ants. All over the skittles. It was pretty gross. But grosser still were: 1) the lid was on the jar. Umm, how did they get in there? Magic? Transporters? My best guess is that my dear husband did not replace the lid tight enough, thus allowing airholes, and ant entrances. 2) the ants had not confined themselves to only the skittles jar. They were also all over the shelves around the skittles jar, and forming a military line from behind the fridge to said shelves and skittles jar. 3) they were also crawling all around my cats' food. Poor cats, at least they could get some... extra protein?

So, what did I do when I saw this disturbing sight? What any red-blooded, tired, hard-working wife would do. I called my husband and told him to "come look at this." (You see, if I just tell him to come look, it doesn't sound like I'm passing the job off on him. Heh.) So, he came downstairs and actually kind of started freaking out. He does that sometimes. After a bit of discussion about what to do, I kind of got annoyed with his weird ideas, and rather than fight to say my opinion, I just went to bed. He, however, though already having been in bed when I called him, stayed downstairs to obsessively and compulsively track the ants to their entrypoint. We have had ants like this before and got rid of them fairly quickly with some ant traps (They kill the queen where she lives!). Said ant traps are even still sitting in the kitchen... So, long story short, he moved the ant traps to the ant entrypoints as best he could, then finally came to bed.

This morning I went down for breakfast and saw the carnage that was the ants. To be sure, they were not all gone, but a good number lay motionless around the shelf (I keep my food there - shudder). The best part though, was the remains of the feast they had enjoyed shortly before their deaths. The ant traps we use are little plastic dome looking things. Inside, they have a supply of ant food. The food actually contains poison. They bring the poison back to their nest and kill the queen and others in the colony. Well, those ants were busy little guys. There was a fine dusting of reddish brown ant food spread at least an inch on any side of the trap. Just beyond this dusting, lay the carcasses of about 20-30 ants. It was kind of gross. But also kind of cool.

So, tonight we get to come back home to the carnage, and hopefully a few less ants. I hope we've left a warning to them though. Ants had better not mess with us. In fact, maybe we should take a picture and post it by their ant hole as a warning. Just to make sure they don't bother us again. Stupid ants.

5 comments:

Josh Leo said...

take photos and post them on the blog! i love getting the best of the stupid invaders. I used to love using raid on bugs.. take that you insect punks!

Anonymous said...

welcome to homeowner ship!!!!!!!!!
At lest it was ants not someting big like a raccon

kkoois said...

kill them all. bugs are bad. they all must die. die, bugs, die!

i have a can of big killer that i carry around with me. jer said he was going to make me a holster to wear and keep my spray can in.

is joel going to set up the ant cam?

Jen said...

What's a can of big killer? Is that like a can opf whoop-ass?

i am not said...

We had ants like that in our old house. I really, really hate ants and get really, really grossed out by large quantities of them (really, really... yes, I'm 4). Some of those carcasses may have been murdered ants that died inside the colony that the alive ants were carrying out - (I watched this fascinating turn of events one day. Oh, and other ants (bigger ants) may come to the death field like fat people come to Old Country Buffet. Not kidding - our exterminator told me so. Dead Ants = food for other bugs. At any rate, I do feel that this would be a great vlog for Josh to do - perhaps using the song "Ants Marching" by Dave Matthews?