May 15, 2012

White Dog pranced into the office singing, "The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah... Well really the ants go marching a gazillion by a gazillion oh no! oh no!" "Cute," I said, "is there a reason for your choice of musical selections this afternoon?"

Nuka came up behind her, tail wagging like crazy. "Can I have an ant farm, momma?" Quinn joined the group, "I am not eating leftover breakfast. There are ants in my bowl and I would feel awful if I accidentally hurt one." "No problemo, bro'," reassured YoYoMa who walked in licking his lips.

"Isn't anyone going to just tell me the problem," I asked pushing away from the desk to go look for myself. Puff came and sat against me, "there are bazillions of ants all over the counter and our bowls. Little teeny tiny ones but they are everywhere!"

"Great! We just barely survive the moth invasion and now we have ANTS!" "Not just ants, momma, but a legion of marching munchers that I don't think can be stopped!" "Let's go look," I sighed.

There were ants. I picked up the dog bowls and dumped the remaining kibble in the outside trash. The sink was crawling, too, so I put the bowls on the back porch and turned the hot water on in the sink. "Isn't that murder?" Quinn asked. "No, Sweetie, it is war!" I swept as many of the insects as I could into the scalding water stream and reached under the cabinet for the pet safe herbal bug spray. There were ants on the bottle.

WD walked around the kitchen pointing to escaping ants as we zapped them; the others hung back unsure of what to do. We annihilated the visible ones and Quinn pressed forward to push his head into the cabinets looking for hidden ones. Finally, we won the battle.

When Steve came home we re-treated the areas and found that the six-leggeds were already attempting to regroup for another attack. A call to our bug guy revealed that ants were the new bane here in the SW because of a mild winter and wet spring. Now that things are drying out the ants are attracted to water sources. He offered little hope if we insisted on something less toxic than an insecticide bombing of the kitchen and basement...we decided this was not a good idea what with the WDA and Michael sharing the space.

"It is like the biblical plagues," Steve shuddered. "Oh, my dog, I hope that we are not going to develop boils or have to deal with frogs...and what if the water turns to blood?" WD worried. "Let's just focus on finding a cure that is safe and eliminates ants," I suggested.

Any ideas?