Reality Check: The Ants Go Marching Two by Two…

I always laugh when I hear comments from friends who think that our life here in rural America is one long parade of beautiful sunsets, berry picking and picnics in the meadows.

Don’t get me wrong, we have lots of those. But there are also many other unsavory parts of rural living.

These are the things that we country folk like to keep to ourselves. But for the sake of reality, I will expose one rather nasty part of country life- BUGS.

At any given time on any given day in the spring, summer or fall, you could find a wide assortment of strange or unusual bugs crawling or buzzing through my house. (If only the kids would remember to  close the screen door!)

Flies, wasps, mud daubers, June bugs, moths, lady beetles, and a variety of spiders are just the ones that I’ve identified.

But right now I’m fighting a losing battle with ants. I get them every year about this time and they take over my kitchen. One year I had made an angel food cake for Pedro’s birthday the next day and left it sitting upside down on the counter while we all went to VBS.  When we arrived home, it was covered with ants! I’m not talking one or two ants, I’m talking covered! They had even burrowed inside!

That meant war.

I threw it to the chickens, put the kids to bed and stayed up until after midnight baking a new cake for his birthday. Then I took the cake to bed with me to keep it from the ants. (I might not have been thinking very clearly by that time- but it did work! It was ant free in the morning!)

As for getting rid of the ants, I can tell you a half dozen things that don’t work! But it would be faster to tell you the one thing that does, Terro. We put some out on a piece of cardboard and those little buggers start drinking it like there was no tomorrow. (It’s rather fascinating to watch in a morbid kind of way.)

Then they take the poison back to their nest and wipe out the whole colony. (Can you hear me laughing?!)

Ahh…but there’s a problem! I’m having trouble finding Terro. I have my last bottle sitting upside down on a piece of cardboard right now hoping there’s enough drops to wipe out this huge colony. They are eating it up as fast I can get it out. Some are even climbing the sides of the bottle to get more!

And so the hunt for Terro begins…because this is one battle I aim to win!