June 15, 2009

Any weekend in which you wipe out an entire civilization with a household mini-vac is a memorable one, and I won’t soon forget what happened to me during the one that just ended.

Sunday morning as I sat at the dining room table, a perfect perch from which to check Facebook on the laptop while monitoring the Chud, I felt a peculiar itch on my forearm.

When I turned my arm over for visual inspection, I found an ant, a tiny one, frantically searching for a way off the strange, fleshy landscape onto which he’d wandered. I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say he found a way off that was likely less pleasant than what he had hoped for.

Five minutes later, the itch had returned. Another ant was crawling across my arm, probably looking for his colleague with whom he was quickly reunited in ant heaven.

“Where are these things coming from?” I wondered, fearing I might already know the answer.

Our house has a tendency to be buggy. Spiders haunt our corners. Deciding their fate is a routine part of my husbandly duties. I am both gladiator and Caesar in the arachnid arena. Sometimes I let them live, carrying them wrapped in tissue outside to shake them free in the yard. Sometimes I crush them and flush away their creepy carcasses. 

Every summer we battle ants as well. When I got up to inspect the area around the dining room table Sunday, I found them streaming by the hundreds back and forth from some spot near the baseboard to the gap beneath the coat closet door, where we store, among other things, a big bag of dog food.  You might be unaware of the popularity of dry dog food among the ant population but, let me assure you, it’s huge.

As I stood watching this miniature army march in formation across the hardwood, two aspects of my personality, a tendency to panic and a deep-seated commitment to finding the path of least resistance, combined to create a perfect plan.

I sucked them up with the dustbuster. Their little bodies disappeared up its whirring snout like mobile homes in a twister. I could see the surprise on their little anty faces. I flung open the closet door, knowing speed was of the essence, and yanked out most everything stored on the floor. A battalion hid there; I went to work on them.

I left the vacuum’s motor running as I scurried outside to empty it, banging the pieces against the rim of our massive plastic trash can to rid them of their cargo.

Back inside, I found a few survivors. These, I beat to death with my bare hands, slapping the floor wildly.

The Chud walked over.

“What are you doing, Daddy?” she asked.

I did not want her to panic in the face of invasion.

“Nothing, Sweetheart,” I said. “I just found a few ants here and I’m getting rid of them before mommy comes to take us to church.”

The Chud, perplexed by the sound of my hands banging on the floor asked, “Are you hammering them out?”

Indeed I was. After a few moments, I seemed to have won. No more ants were in sight, save those whose wrecked bodies now littered the folds of my hands.

I went to the bathroom to wash away the carnage, returned to the scene and cleared the evidence of battle. I removed the remaining corpses with a whisk broom and dust pan.

When the Mrs. returned to drive us to church, not a single ant lingered.

When we came home a couple of hours later, I saw all my efforts had been in vain. In the intervening time, the bugs had rebuilt their operation.

It was my delicate bride who, upon returning from a beautiful service devoted to the worship of the Prince of Peace, broke out the weapons of mass destruction.

“I’ll get the spray,” she said.  “You get some paper towel and get ready to wipe up all the little bodies, that grosses me out.”

Ten seconds later chemical weapons had solved the problem. Our floor was a pool of poison and dead ants. I wiped vigorously.

Then, the house was quiet. Word seemed to have spread through the colony not to mess with the Abbott’s. We’ll see how long it lasts. I fear they will be back, that already in some tiny crack in the molding some small sentry lurks twitching his antennae just waiting until the coast is clear.