I pride myself on leaving living creatures alone. You could also say that I pride myself on avoiding gasoline- at all costs. But back to the living creatures. When they're as intrusive as these things are, what are we to do?
I found them in my organic cranberry cereal the other day. As my mother expressed once, when I unwittingly ate half a mealworm stuffed inside a pistachio shell, "That's a little too organic for my taste." I started refrigerating my cereal, but there are 2 humans in my apartment sharing 1 very small refrigerator. It's time for an ant exodus.
Vinegar didn't work. Lavender didn't work. Those herbal remedy people always think they can pull one over on the Raid people. Upon further Googling, I came across boric acid . That sounded a little more intimidating, so I bought a small jar at a pharmacy for 4 dollars.
One website claimed that all the ants need to do is step on the boric acid and it eats away their skeleton. So what you do is, you put something the ants want in the middle of a ring of boric acid. Another website mentioned that you must actually mix the boric acid and ant food, and that it must meet a perfect ratio- too little boric acid and the ants won't die. Too much boric acid, and they'll die before they serve the deadly dose to the queen. Shakespeare would have smiled at this revelation.
I set the traps yesterday- 3 of them. They looked a little like those mysterious crop circles. Within 5 minutes I saw more ants inside a kitchen than one would hope to find in a playground. I kept thinking of that horror movie, "Ants!" Wasn't there a movie called "Ants!" I'm sure there was- I'm sure I saw the VHS box hundreds of times at the video store as a kid. "Ants!" That's what I thought about. They were so honey hungry, they were dropping off the counter edge in their battle for a taste.
I had to shake my pants several times, and flick them off my arms. As the honey dried up, dozens got stuck. I added a few drops of water and they came back to life and started swimming. When you see these things come marching in and out, and lapping honey in a horrifying swarm, your instinct is to give them Armageddon on the spot. But you have to remember the queen. If a drop of the fatal elixir doesn't reach the queen, then the trap has been set in vain. And so, I watched in repulsion as these shameless gluttons raced back and forth and feasted around the pool of honey.
I wrote a story in college about ANTS, and if you ask me, it's the best story I've ever written. I knew a lot more about them in that story than I seem to now. After some time, an ant about 4 or 5 times the size of all the others came out of the brick wall. It must have been wondering what all the commotion was about outside. Or maybe it was concerned that its children were up way past their bedtime. Was that the queen? Are there larger ants who protect the queen? If it was the queen, she's had her day. She's all smashed up in a tissue, washed down toilet pipes, on her way into that good night.
Notes:
* My story, titled "Ant Farm" can be found in the short story section of this blog.
** Ant-arctica is Ant-Free.
*** I can't seem to recall which ant horror film I used to see in video stores, but I've pulled up two likely candidates. "Empire of Ants" starring Joan Collins, based on H.G. Wells's tale of giant ants invading the Everglades, and "Ants" with the unlikely pairing of Myrna Loy and Suzanne Somers.
(Update: My film expert friend in Illinois, Hollie Hill, reminded me of the famous 1950s mutant ant film, "Them!" Of course! The VHS box I remember seeing was "Them!")
