Dead Ants

Q: What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on the anthill?
A: Dead ants, dead ants, dead ants, etc.

Yeah. Well. No matter how many dead ants you have, there are always live ones. G asked me sadly, "Have we lost the war?" Swarming ants. All over the wall. We've got Ant PTSD. Except there's no Post- to it because they keep coming.

You may remember our ant battles. They continue. We live on top of Ant Mecca. There are ant swarms every time we dig in our soil. There's an ant highway across the doorway of our garage and several smaller turnpikes across our patio. I've picked more ants off Ben than I care to think about. When they're outside, we leave them alone. But they continue to think they can come into the kitchen (and the bathroom) and it needs to stop before I blow Ant Mecca up.

Yesterday, I saw a big ant huddle near the window, and I investigated because these are stupid ants and they never find food, even when it's laying right out there on the counter, so what could they be huddling around? They dispersed like high schoolers at a fight when I approached, and in the middle was a BIG ant. It was almost twice the size of the others, with a big ol' rear end. Do you think she was the queen? Well, queenie, you jus' been dethroned! Lunasea in da house!

If she was the queen, and I killed her (not only am I doing better than the U.S. Government in the war on terror), will the other ants go away too?