Vengeance Is Mine

I haven't mentioned the ants much this summer, but trust me, they're there. It's just that I've adjusted my anti-anty-insurgency operations and achieved a better outcome. Used to be I'd rain down chemicals on their homes and operational transitways, like Agent Orange in Vietnam. And just like in Vietnam, it's didn't work very well. This year, I've been "draining the swamp," which in my house is less of a metaphor and more of a literal truth than I'd like to admit. I've been scrupulous about denying the ants any food, not even the microscopic bits that are left when you clean dishes in the sink. Every day or so I scrub the sink and rinse it down. I do it with a kind of destructive glee, the way a retreating army will burn the crops and kill the livestock as it goes, so as to deny sustenance to the advancing enemy. Heh! I think few people clean sinks with as much martial fervor as I do.

Anyway, it seems to help. But it's hard to be immaculate. I toasted a bagel yesterday, and it didn't take long before I saw an ant going along the counter with a large crumb in its mandibles. Obviously it had gone into the toaster, the little bastard. I was outraged at the effrontery—right in front of me, this ant was going! All happy, like some looter running down the street with a TV! Lately, to be honest, I don't bother to kill the stray ants I see. Live and let live, within reason. If they swarm, they die. One or two—meh. But this, no. "This is unacceptable," I said aloud. And then the Fingertip of Judgment descended. Scratch one ant.