The Goddamned Ants

Remember how I'm the sort of person who literally cannot hurt a fly? This has been a lifelong thing. I mean, I had scenes with my mother* when I was a preschooler because she'd try to be nice and take me to the circus and I'd freak out and cry because omg elephant slavery! And my mother would be all, omg why can't you just be normal and eat your cotton candy and laugh at the clowns? And I'd be all, ::sob:: elephant slavery! And on like that.

As I rocket toward middle age, I don't know if my compassion is running out or my patience is wearing thin or what it is, exactly, but this is finally starting to change. It's the ants. I can't take the goddamned ants.

When we first moved to Ohio, one of the things I kept nagging reminding E about was, "Look, you cannot leave food around like you did in Arizona because in this climate there will be too many bugs in the house." (You would think she would know this, having grown up here, but it's like I always say, we do not live in the sort of universe where anything you would think is ever actually true; we live in the sort of universe where the fundamental governing force is irony.) The ants are not E's fault, I hasten to point out. She has been very good about rinsing her plates and not doing whatever in the hell that thing was that resulted in me finding bits of bologna sandwich in the hallway of our last residence, so it's really not her fault.

The ants obviously had infested the apartment building before we moved in. And they are relentless. If there is a molecule of food left anywhere they are on it like Cartman on a bag of cheezy poofs. It's like there's an Ant Internet, and an Ant Scout will make a post to some central message board and then ants will come from all over creation like a flash mob to devour that teensy tiny morsel of foodstuff that is so miniscule I cannot even identify it.

There was a long adjustment period wherein I had to learn to appreciate just how bad the problem was, because my vision is deteriorating rapidly (that rocket to middle age is a turbulent flight) and at first I would just catch some movement out of the corner of my eye and dismiss it entirely, since due to a high psilocybin intake back in the late 80s my illness, I often see little spots or flashes or whatever that aren't really there. But then I noticed that there was a pattern to some of the movements, and that's when I realized it was the ants. The goddamned ants.

At first, I just got a bit more diligent about rinsing plates and silverware in slightly hotter water and then putting them into the dishwasher immediately after use rather than waiting an hour or a few and only doing dishes twice a day. Still, the ants came. Then I started wiping down every inch of counter, including under the toaster and microwave, etc., after even the smallest amount of food preparation. Still, the ants came. Then I started wiping down the outside of the garbage container once every day. Still, the ants came. Eventually, when the situation devolved into me finding myself down on my knees cleaning the kitchen floor with lemon-scented Clorox wipes after midnight on a near-daily basis, I decided that my choice of strategies had come down to war or surrender.

I have chosen war.

I lost the first battle, wherein I merely killed every ant I saw by hand with a wet paper towel. This did not appear to faze the ants in the slightest. Clearly, I was not being evil enough for this war stuff.

The second battle entailed the deployment of chemical weapons, and, wracked with guilt, I sprayed all the cracks of the kitchen floor and the utility closet with a pesticide specially formulated to induce the demise of ants. (Then I remembered that the water heater, inside the utility closet, is gas powered and thus there was a pilot light mere inches from where I sprayed this highly flammable liquid, so even though I am not a Christian, I took a moment to whisper thanks to Jesus that there had been no explosion that would perhaps land me in the Burn Unit and/or on trial for killing my neighbors in a friendly fire incident.) Now I have to be ever mindful not to climb into bed with my poison soaked socks, wash my hands every time I touch my feet (as I have recently learned, I put my hands on both my feet and my face far more often than I'd have guessed if asked before this series of events took place), and it's become a regular occurrence to find the kitchen floor littered with ant corpses, but still, the ants come.

They are now in my bathroom. WTF? It's not like I keep an extra stash of fudgesicles in there. I do not eat in there. Ever.

The ants are not, near as I can tell, in any of my bathroom products. I'm an eco-liberal in a lot of ways but I'm not one of those all-natural hippies, so there is not, like, real vanilla in my "Fresh Vanilla" body spray or anything. It's chemical vanilla composed of laboratory ingredients I can't pronounce -- and the exact reason for that is the whole Better Living Through Chemistry principle of not having to deal with any fucking ants in the bathroom. There is nothing in there for them to eat! I know they're just in there to piss me off. They can't give me the finger, but they can send out an Ant Scout every single time I sit down to pee just to let me know that the war is still on, bitch.

My complete and utter failure to rid the house of ants no matter how much I clean and scrub and violate my own ethics to commit mass murder is driving me slowly but surely over some as-yet-traversed precipice of my sanity. This conflict could go nuclear. I'll keep you posted.

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*Everything you really need to know about my relationship with my mother can be neatly summed up by watching Chasing Farrah, Mommie Dearest, and Absolutely Fabulous.