the ants go marching

Bugs.

Ick.

As a general rule, I don't mind them so much. I come from a family of campers (as in people who love to camp, not as in being genetically derived from a recreational vehicle), and so bugs for the most part don't, well, bug me.

However, that doesn't mean I'll let them live in peace.

I know... That probably makes me a bad person.

But you'd kill them, too, if you'd had the experience I had at Blue Lake one summer. In my first of three summer as a camper there, I - being the conscientious good little dooby that I am - got in the habit of setting out my clothes the night before. Why I felt the need to do this is beyond me. We had a uniform; how hard could it be to get dressed in the morning? "Let's see... Shall I wear the Blue Lake shirt, the Blue Lake shirt, or the Blue Lake shirt?" Clearly a tough call.

However, the idea apparently made sense to me at the time.

And so it was that on one particular morning I was getting dressed in our cabin, putting on the clothes I had laid out on top of my bag the night before. As I pulled my shirt on, I felt something unusual on my stomach but assumed it was a fuzzy of some sort. I grabbed at it from the front, pinching it between my fingers, and turned the lower portion of my shirt up in order to remove the offending item.

However, it turns out that the fuzzy was not so much a piece of lint... It was in fact a rather fuzzy SPIDER.

No, really.

I kid you not.

It was huge. And icky.

And fuzzy.

And it had been crawling on my stomach.

Needless to say I was a little grossed out. So I squished the sucker and buried him in the trash can. And never again did I set out my clothes the night before.

Sigh... I am a vicious spider murderer.

Anyway, the reason I bring up bugs is that I had a little run-in with some ants this weekend. And those ants in turn had a run-in with the bottom of my shoe that left them - how shall I put this - rather worse for the wear.

While I was cleaning Saturday, I noticed a few of them on the kitchen floor. They seemed to be entering at ground level, near some cabinets. Given the age of the house and the weather, this was not terribly surprising, but it was the first time I'd seen them since moving in here over a year ago. So I killed them, mopped the floor, and moved on. I saw a handful more throughout the day, but didn't worry about it too much. I figured they'd go away once the weather got cold again.

In the evening, Kristin and I went shopping and ran a few errands, including a stop at D&W to pick up the cider and donuts I needed for an event at church on Sunday morning. Oh, and we also picked up some crab rangoons from the Chinese place by the D&W. Yum. I love those things. Well, but you already knew that.

Anyway, when we got home, Kristin helped me take the snacks inside. As she was carrying some of the cider, she slipped, and the jug of cider fell on the kitchen floor. Thankfully she didn't hurt herself, and the cider only spilled a little bit. We mopped it up and moved on with the evening, spending the next half-hour or so eating crab rangoons and playing Wii bowling.

When she left, I went back to the kitchen. I figured I'd have to mop again to clean up the sticky residue from the cider. You can perhaps already guess what I found when I walked in....

Yep. An ant party on the floor. And those little twerps didn't even invite me. Humph.

"Well," I thought to myself. "I seem to have an ant problem." I killed the ones present, mopped again - a couple of times - and went to get ready for bed. Of course, by the time I had done so, the ant party - apparently undeterred by my menacing slippers and mop - was going strong once again. I killed another round of the little buggers and gave the floor another mopping before turning in for the night.

The next morning I overslept a little, and so I was in a hurry to get out the door to church on time. Needless to say I was not looking forward to what I would find in the kitchen. Visions of ant swarms traversing the floor crossed my mind as I got up and headed that way. However, much to my surprise the ants had not in fact taken over the kitchen entirely! In fact, there were far fewer ants than there had been the night before. Hooray!

Anyway, the moral of the story is that after some more killing and some more mopping the ants have not reappeared. Good thing, too. Otherwise I was going to have to go buy an anteater or something.

Or maybe just some Raid.