Feeling Antsy. (and some other things.)

*******UPDATE*******

Okay, so I wrote this post on 5/10/2007, but I didn't have time to finish it, and I KEEP not having time to finish it, and we're going out of town tomorrow, so I figured I'd post it anyway, as is.

Maybe if I get some spare time while we're traveling (first to Portland, then to Seaside) I'll post then too, but since I'm not sure if that will happen I figured I should post now. Especially since it's been a million years since my last post. I have a lot of stuff to say, but I wish I could just post little bits at a time, so it wouldn't take so much time.

I know I COULD post little bits at a time, but I have a hard time stopping myself once I start typing - you know how it goes. Or maybe you don't. Who knows. Anyway, I have to go pack, because we're leaving first thing in the AM. Bye! :)

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In the past few weeks I've been SUPER busy. Like, busy enough to actually call what I do (homemaking) a job. Or I've been hanging out with other people. Or outside. Or all of the above. Spring is HERE! :D And I've had things I've wanted to write about, but I haven't had time to sit down and write them. But today I'm feeling a little caged in (I'll talk about that next), so I figured it's as good a time as any to write a blog post.

There are ants all over our front walk.
This is why I feel caged in. I'm deathly allergic to fire ants (which we don't have in Washington), and even though I was never tested for other ant venom (do other ants HAVE venom?), I still get, well, antsy around them. Worse still: These are CARPENTER ants.

I was bitten by a carpenter ant a couple of years ago and nothing happened, but the bite didn't even swell up, so I think it just pinched me, and that it didn't actually use any venom. So even though I figure it'll *probably* be fine, I'm still a little scared of them. I should really just get tested for a bunch of venoms, so I'll know for sure. I've never been stung by a bee either, so I don't even know if I'm allergic to those. Blah.

So right now I'm home alone with tons of giant, wood-boring ants swarming around in front of the house that I own and live in, I have no epi-pens (just to make me feel safe), and I sprayed Raid all over the place (part of an "Ant & Roach" can, and an ENTIRE "Wasp and Hornet" can) until I ran out, and more ants just keep showing up.

After I ran out of Raid, I tried spraying them with kitchen cleaner (we use organic, so it of course did NOTHING to stop them), and since then I've been going out every half an hour to smash them with Brett's flip flops. I'm not using MY shoes, because that's gross. Besides, his are bigger, so they make me feel safer.

I hate squishing bugs SO MUCH. Part of it is that despite their tiny, invertebrate status, I really do see them as animals. You may roll your eyes at that, but it's true! They may live seemingly robotic, somewhat grody little lives, but each one of them has a brain and a life force, just like you and me. When an ant realizes you're trying to smoosh it, it runs around all panicked and crazy, just like a person would, if they were about to be smooshed.

Still though, I've already demonstrated that I'm cool with poisoning them to death (ants, not people), so here's where I explain the OTHER part of why I hate squishing bugs.

It's that SOUND. The *pop!* of an exoskeleton cracking open in a fountain of carnage. The *crunch!* of broken, amputated limbs. The *shriek!* of agony as their life flashes before their (sometimes compound) eyes. Okay, maybe there's no audible shrieking, but still! It's fucking gross. And it makes me feel bad. And a little gaggy.

Every time I go out there I see fewer and fewer of them, but knowing ants, that's because it's getting cooler as the afternoon progresses, not because I've actually had a negative impact on their workforce. Ants are AWESOME at workforce management.

We have a dead stump that's only a few feet away from the front of our house, so I'm crossing my fingers that when we take it out tomorrow we'll find the nest there, but if not...should we call an exterminator? Should we call an exterminator anyway? Infestations are lame.

As a kid in the south, I learned that if you throw raw grits on an ant hill it will kill them, because they eat the grits, the grits expand, and *pop!* the ants explode. It works nicely on fire ants, so I figure it'll work on carpenter ants too. So tonight I think I'll have Brett pick up some more Raid, maybe some bait traps, and some polenta (as we call it in the north) on his way home from work. Then tomorrow: WAR.

Speaking of dead animals...
Last Thursday I was having an amazingly good day. The sun was shining, the house was clean, some of my lavender seedlings had started to sprout new leaves, and the weekend was only one day away.

Usually when I wander around the house during the day, our kitties follow me and hang out in whatever room I'm in. So since I spent most of the morning in the living room and bar, I was a little confused when I walked in our master bedroom to pee (in the bathroom, not the bedroom), and I saw both of them in there; one on the window sill, and the other on a cat tower that sits next to an exterior glass door.

They didn't look freaked out or anything, just curious about something outside, so I gave one of them a head scratch, glanced outside (saw nothing), and left. I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water and I heard *something* outside while I was in there, but I looked outside and again saw nothing, so I figured it was just a neighbor doing yard work or something.

I stayed in the kitchen for most of the afternoon - I made a roast, baked hamburger buns from scratch, baked a loaf of cheesy bread from scratch, did some cleaning, and mostly just enjoyed the sunshine pouring in through the windows, and the new Mika album on my ipod.

It was truly a perfect day. And what happens when things seem perfect? Bad Things.

Brett comes home. We greet each other warmly, he gushes about how nice it is when the house smells like bread, we dance around in the kitchen a little bit, and he says he's going to go clean out the hot tub, because a repairman was coming the next day to replace our pump.

Brett goes outside, and I continue my happy bustling in the kitchen. Brett bolts back inside, and says, "OH. MY. GOD." I am scared and startled. His face is pale. His eyes are huge and round. "A SQUIRREL DROWNED IN OUR HOT TUB," he says.

I honestly don't remember what I said at that point. Panic, disgust, sadness, disgust, guilt, disgust, disgust, disgust...a million emotions flooded into my brain at once. Where do emotions come from? Are they chemicals? Anyway. The point is - I was disgusted. Panicked, and disgusted. Brett was really more upset and sad than disgusted, but he did his fair share of cootie dancing too.

So we made a 911 call to our local hot tub expert, and at his advice we scooped out the squirrel, cleaned the hot tub with bromine, cleaned the hot tub with bleach, cleaned the hot tub with bromine, and then used it. Well, Brett did anyway. I think of squirrels as rats with bushy tails, so I'm still feeling a bit skiddish about it.

Luckily the squirrel hadn't been in there long - the noises the kitties and I heard that afternoon were almost surely the squirrel fighting for it's life. Brett had left the cover off the night before because he knew he was going to clean it (plus it had mostly already been drained, so there was only about 2' of water), and the squirrel must've fallen in.

It was in rigor when he scooped it out, and we threw it in a garbage bag and may or may not have hid it in our garbage. Depending on whether or not it's legal to hide dead animals in your garbage. Why can you put a turkey carcass in your garbage but not a squirrel? Don't rats die in garbage cans all the time? I bet they do.

Anyway, so ants and squirrels aside, not much is up with me