Ants Marching

Imagine this. You wake up early in the morning before work. You need to go to the basement to get the clothes out of the dryer so you can actually have something clean to wear today. At the top of the basement stairs is a door to the backyard and as you pass through that entryway and down the stairs, you notice that the floor feels incredibly dirty. You look back, wondering why there is so much dirt on the floor all of the sudden. Then it hits you. That's not dirt. It's ants. What you were feeling was the formian carnage as you trampled them underfoot.

I haven't just described the beginning of a SciFi original movie (though it could be, and if it was, I'd blog about it). I just described what actually happened to me earlier this summer. The entire floor, door, doorframe, and several of the stairs were covered in ants.

Needless to say, I handled this calmly and started tearing the house apart looking for any for of ant spray. Unfortunately, I couldn't find what I was looking for. While I got ready for work, MK went to the store to get something to kill them. While I was waiting for her to return, I began the assaulted. I broke out the boric acid powder that is intended for roaches, but surely would work on ants too. I began dusting the area, making sure that the door, the walls, the floor and even the ants looked like they belonged in Tony Montana's bedroom. Eventually, MK returned from the store with two separate sprays designed to kill ants, one of which was an all natural mint oil that claimed to be pet safe. Since we have two dogs that walk through the currently ant-infested area all the time, I grabbed the pet safe spray, ripped off the lid and went to work.

Soon the ants were dropping like flies (huh?), but I wasn't done yet. If there were any still moving, they got another spray. If they were dead, they got another spray just for good measure. I may have gone a little overboard with our anti-insect chemical warfare, though. I realize that now that I'm able to be rational. I say that not just because of the visit we got from Hans Blix asking if we could tone it down a bit before the Security Council had to impose sanctions, but also because the entire house smelled like mint for two days. But it was worth it, because they're gone.

I won, because I'm the human: I'm bigger, I have complex reasoning skills, and I have thumbs. Stupid ants can't compete with thumbs.