Visiting Ants
I had an infestation of ants this week. They came in from under the carpet in a corner of the pantry. I have no idea why anyone would want a pantry to have carpet by the way, but it’s as connected to the living room, in this apartment, as it is the kitchen, so it ended up carpeted. Hopefully nothing I put in there leaks. Anyway, they trekked from there the short distance to my kitchen trash, which, due to space considerations is actually even more towards the living room and just as much not in the kitchen as the pantry; but enough about apartment geography…
Now I don’t have anything against ants, but I do have something against uninvited house guests, so I decided that the ants had to go. The only thing is that I don’t have any sort of insecticide at the moment. So I decided to get some. But I wasn’t in any real rush. The ants were pretty well behaved, I thought they might have been intimidated by God hanging around my place, but she tells me that ants don’t really care about her one way or the other. That’s one of the areas where were different from ants. So I asked her if it was okay that I was going to decimate the invaders, and she told me it was between me and them.
So I figured I’d pick up some ant spray in the normal course of my shopping, no need to make a special trip or anything. It turns out though that the normal course of my shopping just doesn’t seem to get near bug spray very often. I do most of my shopping at Costco, and they don’t seem to stock the stuff. Well, things that I don’t get at Costco, I generally pick up at Trader Joe’s. They also don’t seem particularly interested in helping me end the lives of some nuisance visitors. God just grinned at me when I’d bring up the subject. I began to suspect that she was keeping me from getting the stuff, but she of course denied it.
So where do I get bug spray? I’ve had it in the past without going out of my way, so where did I get it. To the best of my recall, I get it at those big home improvement stores, but since I’m renting an apartment now, I haven’t had much call to go to one of those, so I haven’t even learned where one is up here.
All in all, it’s been a most unsatisfying turn of events. Then I came home today and the ants were gone. Maybe they had finished off whatever was in the trash. Maybe God chased them away, for their own good. Maybe they found some ant bait in a neighbor’s apartment. I really don’t know. One thing I do know, though, is that I finally got God to admit that she sees humans and ants differently, that we’re not just two different species united by being among those that the world has far more of than it needs. The difference between us and ants? The difference is that we mourn our dead and missing, and the ants don’t. And apparently that’s enough to make God not care if I kill them. Suddenly I feel a lot better about attending funerals.
When my daughter was two we had a black widow problem, which is one of the few forms of pest that will actually get me to buy bug spray. We were at one of those large home improvement stores and slightly overwhelmed by the huge selection. My precocious girl quickly figured out that the snail and slug poison had pictures of snails and slugs on the box, ant spray had pictures of ants, etc. We were looking for something with pictures of spiders. Unfortunately, products meant to eliminate fleas and ticks don’t have pictures of fleas and ticks. When she saw the toxins with happy retrievers and tabbies on the label she followed the same logic as the other products and ended up bawling piteously in the household whatever-icide aisle.
Don’t take toddlers poison shopping. That’s my advice. I also find that ants don’t like orange oil. Mopping and wiping counters with slightly diluted citra-solv helps, but probably not in a carpeted pantry.
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god is every where i have experienced this. he is always with me helps me in very situation…