October, 2009 – Feeling Antsy

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AS I WAS SAYINGAlan Williamson

by Alan Williamson

 

Feeling Antsy

 

I’ve never been nice to ants and the bad karma of my abusive behavior has come back to bite me in the butt. And the ankle.  And the arm. And other parts of the anatomy much too personal to itemize.
      Lately it seems ants are working day and night to think of ways to pay me back for my long-standing policy of swatting, stomping or spraying them on sight. Consider the following ant-initiated incidents from the past few months:

Ants Ambush My New Car. I hadn’t purchased a new car in nine years, so I was eager to experience the thrills of the latest automotive innovations and that treasured, perversely pleasing fragrance known as “new car smell.” The honeymoon between me and my Mustang Convertible was going well until a few days out of the showroom when the first ant appeared on the dashboard. Then I noticed one on the windshield, the steering wheel, and the center console. Next, a steady stream of them marshaled forces along both door panels before making their way up to the radio and changing one of my pre-set buttons to a disco station. Soon my new car smell was replaced by the haunting aroma of Raid Ant & Roach Spray.

Ants Assault My Mother-in-Law. I was sitting next to her in the back seat of a rental car on the way to dinner. Seeing an ant scurry up her arm, I gently smacked it, believing it to be an isolated incident. When we returned to the car later, her seat was peppered with the tiny tormentors. After some high spirited swatting and stomping, we bought still more ant and roach spray, which, by now, I was considering using as aftershave.

Ants Surround Our House. Ants can nest almost anywhere around your home and yard. At our place, they’ve taken up residence in the soil, trees, shrubs – even the cracks and crevices in our paver brick driveway. Hector, our pest eradication technician (otherwise known as “the bug guy”), comes out once a month or so to identify infestation sites, note migration patterns, and squirt chemicals that cause the ants to relocate their colonies from the outside of the house to the inside.

Ants Storm Our Kitchen. When my wife and I started seeing a chorus line of ants tap dance across the kitchen counter we called Hector back out.
      “They move their colonies when threatened,” he informed us. “After I sprayed outside they headed inside looking for safe shelter and a source of food.”

      “I liked it better when they were outside,” I stipulated, clarifying my personal preference as a consumer of home pest control services.

      “I’ll give you an inside treatment to flush them out and drive the survivors back outside,” he assured me.

      This strategy seems to work fine until someone drops a crumb from a piece of banana nut bread or the queen ant decides that having 350,000 worker ants in her colony is no fun if she can’t send a few off to war in our kitchen or family room. With every invasion the message is clear: we are surrounded by an army and our house is a giant picnic basket worth dying for.

Ants Launch an Air Attack.  In an onslaught of “shock and awe” magnitude, my wife and I came home from a weekend away to find epic swarms of ants flying around inside our house. Now, in the world as I knew it, ants aren’t endowed with the gift of flight, which instantly put the experience into the realm of the paranormal. It was about the same level of weirdness as hearing a dog talk, which, by the way, I have never personally encountered, except the time I was left alone in a room with an albino Doberman. At this point, I was prepared for the full-blown Amityville Horror experience in homeownership, complete with unexplained power outages, furniture stacked into pyramids in the middle of the floor, and the booming, disembodied voice in the night claiming to be the original owner and demanding that we rethink the whole burgundy-colored accent-wall in the master bedroom.

      Instead, I got three months of flying ants that would show up out of nowhere anytime we had more than a 25-watt bulb on in the house and send us fleeing into other rooms where we would barricade the door and pray for whatever ancient curse was put on us to expire. The flying ants were finally vanquished when Hector’s no-nonsense colleague Edgar drilled holes in our walls and injected enough flying ant poison to bring down the 94th Aerial Squadron.

      Call me paranoid, but judging from the relentless, well-organized and increasingly malicious nature of the attacks against me and members of my family, the ant world has targeted me for extermination. If that’s their mission, drastic measures are called for in response. Starting tomorrow, no more free banana nut bread crumbs. And I’m hiring Hector the bug guy as a bodyguard. 

 

 

 

Alan Williamson is an award-winning writer with 27 years in the field of true fiction (advertising). A practical man who knows that writing for a living is risky going, he has taken steps to pursue a second, more stable career as a leggy super model. Alan can be reached at alwilly@bellsouth.net.