The OTHER Invasion of 2004

So I got home tonight and opened the dishwasher. It took my addled yet still razor-sharp brain a moment to process what I saw. It looked like a large shaker of chocolate sprinkles (we used to call them "jimmies") had exploded inside my dishwasher. But wait a second, these sprinkles were moving!

Yep, we had ants. Coating the inside of the *&^%$' dishwasher.

So I did the best thing I could think of - I slammed it shut and turned it on. I let it run about 10 minutes while I wiped more ants from under the #%^&* sink. I opened it again, added soap (might as well get them clean while we're at it) and started it up again.

I have done my time with ants. I have done my time with ants. In college, I lived in an old apartment building full of charm and ants. Every single @#$%^ winter morning, my roommate or I would wipe at least a million of the suckers from our kitchen. We never had food in the apartment (this was college, remember), yet they still came back. We were on the 3rd floor, and they never bothered the first or second floor. We killed all their comrades, and they returned fire. (Reminds of that Paula Poundstone joke, "Hey, there's no food here and we're all getting killed. Maybe we should try next door." R.I.P. Paula's Career.) We complained, we threatened to get an exterminator and send the bill to the manager, we set traps, we did everything we could think of. You know what the manager did when we threatened to hire the exterminator? He was going out of town that weekend and asked the college boys who lived in the apartment next to us to check on the ants. Because the ants were going to be so much more afraid of the drunks next door than of us. Grrrr. We declined their alcohol-laden offer. Although in hindsight, their breath might have worked as a fogger of sorts.

Then the weather would get better and the ants would finally leave us.

I have done my time with ants. You all need to leave. This is a dictatorship run by me (and G) and your kind are not welcome here. For all my environmental concern, I'm not afraid to bring out the weapons of mass destruction (Raid) when it comes to your kind. However, G is a liberal through and through, and I know he'd see it as hostile imperialism, and would try to find kindler, gentler ways of persuading the ants to leave. Because I am a benevolent dictator, I will listen to any suggestions available before bombing the h*ll out of them.