Antmageddon

Wednesday evening, the #1 son traipsed into my basement lair on some 'I want' mission, and casually announced: "You know there is a dead spider out here swarming with ants." Um...no. If I knew that, I would be battling the invasion like a firejumper seeking 15 minutes of fame and a book deal.

Those irritating insects were swarming out of the basement wall/floor junction like rats off a sinking ship. Or like students heading for the FREE WATER table during a boil order at Newmentia. The basement wall and floor are both concrete slabs. There is stick-down tile on the floor, and Carpenter H-installed paneling over the wall. Who knew ants were such great spider-hunters that they could sniff a sneaky arachnid from the earth nine feet above? Never before had I seen an ant in the basement. Filing under the kitchen door, yes. And the basement has intermittently hosted millipedes, mice, crickets, spiders, and some weird waspy-scorpiony thingy that The Pony saw and no one else.

I dispatched The Pony upstairs to the laundry room for the insect killer. I yearned for my Black Flag Wasp and Hornet Killer, but alas, I had gone on a murder spree just hours before, bagging seven stinging demons around the Mansion porch, and depleting my favorite pesticide. It shoots a 20-foot blast! Don't bother looking for it at The Devil's Playground. The Devil wants those demons to survive. You have to get it at Save-A-Lot. I had to make do with some Raid Insect Killer, which is just too generic and namby-pamby for my liking. That blue-topped can emits an anemic mist. But it still killed those ants dead. Just not dramatically enough for me. I wanted to blast those cheeky spider-chompers back up the wall they came from.

My record so far this spring:

Hillbilly Mom--0
Ticks--1

Hillbilly Mom--7
Wasps--0

Hillbilly Mom--382
Ants--0

It's going to be a long season.