Ants Marching…

About a week ago, Bitty knocked over a cup full of juice in our dinette room.

It took a couple of passes with the mop to clean it up.  And by mop, I mean my swiffer thingy. 

The next morning, I stepped barefoot near the spot and realized it was still a little sticky, so I got down on the floor and gave it another good scrubbing, this time by hand. 

The morning after that, little black ants were on the dinette floor.  Since there were only about six, I enlisted Bitty and we picked them up and carried them out back. Later that afternoon, we found some more on the floor and a few on the counter.  These too, we set free in the backyard.

{I’m the reason the ants came into the house}

 

The next morning, I took five more ants outside, turned around and there were now ten more on the counter.  I gave up trying to capture and moved on to squishing. 

 

But my heart wasn’t in it, so I was only half-squishing them.  I quickly realized that half-squishing wasn’t all-the-way killing them, and they were now lurching morbidly all over my counter.  Horrified, I smooshed them all the way.  Half-dead ants are way worse looking than real live ants.

 

After that, I thoughly cleaned the kitchen and dinette and made sure there were no crumbs available for the ants to snack on and tell their ant friends about.  But it didn’t matter; I was now involved in an epic battle for domination of the kitchen. 

 

I told the BLT* that they were to squish on sight and show no mercy. 

 

*Not the sandwich.

 

Squishing commenced full force and we could tell we were gaining the upper hand.  By Sunday morning, there was nary an ant to be found, even when chocolate donuts sat opened on the kitchen counter all day.  We were victorious.

 

I should note that we have a ‘live and let live’ for ‘all of God’s creatures’ philosophy around here that pretty much applies to everything except spiders*. 

 

*Spiders aren’t included because they have eight eyes and that’s just not right. 

 

What about you?  Do you squish immediately or try to set things free?