About a week and a half ago, Alex discovered a few ants convened on the floor by our garbage can and promptly flipped out. Being born and raised in rural back-country, a few ants never bothered me. We cleaned em up, sprayed the area, and I forgot about them.
Alex, however, did not.
Every day, he checked for ants. He’d find one or two and kill them and then explore every effing corner of our house like he was Indiana Jones looking for the Holy Grail. He’d tell me how freaked out he was, and I’d feel sorry for him—mostly because I was like, wow, this dude’s got some neuroses that I was unaware of. I knew he hated spiders, but ants? What’s the big deal?
A couple days later, we found another gathering, this time in our bathroom. I was less pleased with this discovery (not that I was pleased with the first one, but more nonplussed). My bathroom is where I go to get clean and purdy. There shouldn’t be bugs in there. We once again killed the little suckers and sprayed (and now Alex went all around the outside of the house spraying and cleaning up ever-y-thang) and while I was bothered, within a couple ant-free hours, I forgot about the whole thing.
A few more errant ants and my husband was losing his shit. He couldn’t stop talking about it. He kept wondering where they were coming from. He took spackle and started just smearing it over any tiny hole he found in the walls. He left a note on our neighbor’s car to call us to see if he could go over to their side of the house and also spray (since the ants were primarily coming in from the side of our house that faces their house). I think at one point he started talking to himself and rocking back and forth in the corner.
This entire time, I’m keeping it cool. Then this morning I woke up at 4am and couldn’t fall back asleep so I made my way to the couch. I knocked out again only to be woken up by a soft tickling on my face. I brushed it off, thinking it was some phantom hair or something but then I realized…it was moving around. It was…walking. It was a fucking ant crawling on my fucking face.
ON MY FACE.
No longer keeping it cool, my friends. I keep scratching my hair and shaking it around expecting an army of ants to fall out of it. I keep swatting at my face and there are definitely ants inside my dress and my tights and my shoes and they are everywhere, I just know it. If people walk by my desk today and see me doing this, just know it’s because I’m covered in ants:
So maybe my rural upbringing made me cool with ants in my house, but it definitely did not make me cool with ants on my face. Alex and I are now both on the bus to Crazytown, and we’re taking our poor son with us. Lucas points out ants on the ground, or black lint, or any small spot he sees, which of course sends me and my husband into full-blown Stage 5 red alert lockdown. If Lucas spills his food, we literally dive to catch it before it hits the ground and ants swarm all over it.
We are about to go on vacation in a couple days, and Alex is ready to nuke the house. We have our friend coming to check on our place while we’re gone, and our explicit instructions to him are to look out for ants and kill each and every one of them dead. We’ll also probably set out about a hundred ant traps before we go.
Bugs don’t normally bug me (YES THAT PUN IS INTENDED), but bugs in my house I’m not too comfortable with and bugs on my face turn my insides out and set my brain on fire. Now I understand how Alex has been feeling for the past week and a half, and I’m sorry I made light of it. This shit is not cool, guys. Not….cool.
The Olive Gal
green of skin, black of heart
It’s typically as the seasons change. Each fall we get ants trying to set up house inside. Did your weather change recently? We just throw out a few of those strips that kills them and spray around the doors. Will take a week, but they can be defeated.
Yeah, it’s cooled down quite a bit and we had a lot of rain on Friday. We’ve sprayed the shit out of our house, but it’s time for the ant baits. Seriously, it’s just ants. But they were on my face, Meg. Alex put a piece of cheese down on the counter for a second and picked it up, about to take a bite, and there was a damn ant on it too. Can you feel our pain??
Ahh yes, the wild bush of Sterling, MA rivals darkest Africa and territories yet unexplored in Papua New-Guinea!!
Since moving to the Westchester burbs (which are incredibly similar to central MA) I have had my own battle with the insects. Specifically the fucking stink bugs! Bane of my damned existence. Even still…it’s like they spontaneously erupt into being as soon as the Hg crosses 58 degrees! Maddening!
We also seem to have the biggest, throbbingist earthworms in all the world. I lifted a paving stone a few days ago and instantly felt inadequate…I don’t really have much more to say about that.