My New Hobby

If you happen to drive by a house and see a woman with her head halfway out the kitchen window and a bug-eyed crazy look on her face, wielding a gun - a glue gun, that is - it's probably me. I'm at war with the sugar ants. But since I'm the kind of person who can't hurt a fly, I've got to take the defensive approach. I can't just go get something that's going to kill them - the ants have as much a right to live as we humans do. What I've come up with a systematic approach, well, really, it's quite random, but let's just pretend for a minute that it's sane.

Anyway, here's how I've been spending my time: I come into the kitchen to say, cook a meal, but before I can do that, I've got to clear out the fifty ants who have taken up residence on my kitchen counter. They're coming in the window, that's clear, or at least that's how they started, now I think they live in the kitchen, under the counter, somewhere within the window frame, in small crevices that humans cannot see.

Two night ago I had a freaky dream in which I was at my church and for some reason I ended up in the hearth room and there were all these ants coming out of the woodwork. A nun, which we don't have in the Episcopal church, came in, turned around an old organ and there was the Ant Colony of the Century. It was crazy alive with ants. I was totally freaked in that dream and my skin has been crawling ever since.

After that point, I declared (humane) war on the Ants. I brought out the glue gun a then and I follow the creepy little suckers back to their home. After the hole they're going through is clear, I fill it in with dripping hot glue. Take that, suckers! I think. Eventually more ants come out, and it's always when I'm not looking. I'm sure they have guard ants standing in places I can't see who tell the explorer ants when my head is turned. Then, when I've just glanced away, they come out in droves. I swear, I can't figure out where they are entering from, but I've figured out that they get scared of me when I come into the kitchen so I bang around, or blow air on them and get them to run back to where they came from (or at least I think they are going back to where they came from, but I wouldn't put it past them to use decoy ants to throw me off their trail). When I see their entrance hole, I seal it up with Hot Glue. The ants who didn't make it back home scramble around, searching for an escape, but I'm not sitting there laughing or applauding myself, I actually want them to find an out, I want to know all their little nooks. I want them to be able to return home to safety and be alive, I just don't want them in My Kitchen.

I've covered several feet of teensy cracks in the kitchen, but they're still making it in. I've emptied the counter of clutter, the better to clear crumbs. I clean the counter many times a day with vinegar or stronger stuff - they still want in. I don't know what to do, I already spend half my life in the kitchen, these days I'm basically there all the time, with one eye on the windowsill, just waiting for the little buggers to enter. I haven't found anything that will stop them for good, but then again, I haven't had time to research natural ant repellents because I can't leave the kitchen.