Category: General stuff

I had an ongoing battle with ants in my driveway. They came up every spring, and I kinda let them work in peace. They are one of God’s creatures, don’t you think? If they stay away from my house, they can march around all they want, and have their little families.

BUT!! This year they became aggressive! They seemed more organized. Big groups of them came out of the cracks at once. Out front were the winged ants. They must have been their air force. Then there were some very militant looking ants. That must have been their marines. Following that was a huge amount of marching ants that came in groups and maneuvered around like they were trying to out flank me. They must have been the army.

The winged ants are much faster than the rest. If they get airborne they can cause much damage. The marine ants come at you like they will fight to the end, and they protect each other with tremendous valor. The army guys are very good at setting up observation posts, and getting behind you with of their infiltration techniques.

I decided I needed to come up with a counter attack. I tried to walk among them to make them to flatten out a bit. This didn’t work, because the “marines,” rushed in and covered my shoes with their little bodies. I ran!

Then I tried the old faithful bug spray. This seemed to work at first as they had many casualties. They dropped back into the cracks, and I did a victory dance.

However, the next day, they must have called up the reserves because there were ten times as many ants as the day before, and they didn’t look like happy campers.

Fear began to fill my soul. I could see the headline in the local paper. “Man eaten alive by angry mob of ants!”

I retreated into my garage for a planning session. I watched as the black mass out on the driveway came my way! There was no time to lose.

Then I remembered the Ace Hardware man, (Ace is the place, you know,) told me about a new ant treat that comes in a can like Pringles chips. It looks pretty harmless. When you put some in your hand, it appears to be ground cereal.

I ran to the garden cupboard, and found the can. I advanced towards the ants. They kept coming towards me. This would be the deciding battle.

I sprinkled some of the “food,” in front of the oncoming hoard of ants. The first row of ants ignored the food at first. The second row stopped. It looked like they smelled the goodies. Then all of a sudden that row of ants started rolling around. They were wincing in pain. The first row stopped and went back to the second row. BIG mistake! They started touching the goodies, and then they too curled up in pain.

Row after row came crawling over the dead ants in front of them, like the civil war, when the soldiers very close to the enemy shot at them as they stood in rows.

This battle went on for about a half hour, and then I started feeling guilty. Those ants had families. They had children. Some were dads. Some were moms, aunts, uncles, cousins. I was wiping out a whole generation.

I stopped laying down the killer food, but it was too late. There was not one ant standing. All were withering in pain and heading to the ant heaven in the sky. I had wiped out a whole nation with one battle.

I don’t see many ants in the driveway anymore. I’m so thankful, because the guilt I still carry wouldn’t allow me to do mass extinction again.

If you have ants outside your house, think about what they are doing. Are they destroying anything? Do they get into the house? Are they too aggressive? If you say no to these questions, you can adopt them. Feed them all you want. As a matter of fact I will tell my ants they can pack-up and come to see you. They will be like the long lost relatives that say they want to visit for a couple of days, and then they stay for months. Enjoy!