Ant Invasion

This post originally appeared in the Nashville City Paper.

What I now refer to as Our Nightmare began on a deceptively beautiful spring morning.

Blearily rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I was padding into the kitchen, en route to the coffeemaker, when I saw something truly horrifying.

Dozens of black specks dotted the counter tops. Confused, I stood staring for a moment. Had one of my teenage stepdaughters gone on another midnight Oreo binge? But wait. The specks were… moving.

“Ants!” I shrieked. “ANTS!”

Those damnable ants had infiltrated my personal food preparation station. It was all too much. I screamed. And then I fainted.

OK, OK. Actually, I got a damp sponge, wiped them all up and sent them on their way down our kitchen drain. However, I felt like screaming and fainting, and that’s what matters, right?

It’s not that I’m afraid of a few ants, mind you. It’s that I’ve been waging war against them for years and for the first time in my life, I’m losing. Big time.

Generally when ants appear, I put out some ant bait from the supermarket and, within 24 hours, they’re gone. This time, though, is different. They’ve evolved or something, grown bigger brains, and suddenly are impervious to every home remedy I’ve employed, be it poison, vinegar, chalk, cinnamon, cornmeal, or peppermint oil. Nothing has worked. Nothing.

The ants have invaded our guest bathroom sink. They use the floor of my laundry closet as a social gathering space. They’ve staked out a window in the playroom. They’ve laid waste to my kitchen pantry. They’ve made a highway out of the tub in our bathroom. They appear to be staging a million ant march just inside our front door. Each time I eradicate them from one part of the house, they pop up in another. I can almost hear them laughing at me, in their evil, high-pitched ant voices.

And I’m not the only one who’s losing it.

My stepdaughters dream now about ants. My toddler son plays with them on the floor, pushing one along for a bit before tiring of the game and squashing it with a fat finger. My 5-year-old daughter has asked more than once if the zoo will let us borrow its giant anteater, just for a few days.

“We live in an ant house, Mommy,” she said yesterday with a sad sigh. As I stared dully at the ants trailing across the rim of my kitchen sink, I knew that I couldn’t live this way much longer. I fantasized about taking the kids and just leaving.

“It’s me or the ants!” I imagined myself saying, before slamming the front door and heading to a hotel (preferably one with an outdoor pool). Before I could leave, though, I owed it to my husband to hire some sort of mediator, an insect counselor, if you will. I took a deep breath and looked up ‘Exterminator’ in the Yellow Pages.

Some of you are probably thinking I should have hired a bug man from the get-go, but the truth is that my fear of exterminators is almost as great as my hatred of ants in the kitchen. My phobia dates back to the time when I was 11 and a man named Doug was handling our pest control.

Unfortunately, Doug was a pervert.

Each month, he’d come to our home and quickly tiptoe straight for any closed door he could find. “Bug Man!” he’d shout gleefully, simultaneously whipping open the door.

More than a few times, he was rewarded for his efforts by the sight of one of us half-dressed and running for cover or worse, sitting on the toilet. Somehow, it took us nearly a year to realize that each one of us had been surprised more than once by “Bug Man!” in various compromising situations. Doug was duly fired and quickly became the stuff of family legend. For years afterward, we’d shout, “Bug Man!” and rattle the door handle whenever someone was on the john.

Clearly, though, Doug had left me with some, uh, deep-seated issues. I felt the weight of the world was on my shoulders as I mulled over whether to subject my family to an insect invasion of epic proportions or a potential perv.

Decisions, decisions.

In the end, I decided I couldn’t take it one more day, and called up a guy we’ll call Marvin, who was highly recommended by several friends. Marvin showed up on time, sprayed down the whole house inside and out, and promised an end to our problems….

…in eight to 14 days.

It is now day seven and the ants continue to march 10 by 10 through nearly every room of the house, while I sit drooling in the corner, an ant crawling unchecked across my forehead. The sound of a truck outside draws me from my catatonic state. I pick myself up off the floor and move to a window.

“Looky, looky, looky,” I mutter as the truck stops in front of my neighbor’s house. It is emblazoned with the words, COOK’S PEST CONTROL.

I laugh crazily. It’s useless to resist these ants. They’re smart. They’re multiplying.

And you’re undoubtedly next.