Antvasion!

Casa de Crazy has Occasional Ants.  Not ants for all occasions, which brings to mind ants dressed in all kinds of fun costumes, dancing, wee tuxedos and shiny shoes with six spats, bow ties impeccably tied.  Or ants in holiday hats hauling enormous sacks of presents around.  Or ants helping pack boxes and move them out to the van.

No, we occasionally (and by occasionally I mean more and more often) have large, black ants marching about the kitchen on various ant missions that they don't bother telling us about.

Oh, lort, is that my counter?  I swear it's not really that dirty - I just sprinkled pepper on a chicken and it kind of got away from me.  Ahem.

That fellow up there is one of the smaller ones.  Yes, smaller.

 Another one of the smaller ones, pausing to groom itself for its close up.

I didn't mind them much at first.  When they initially visited casa de Crazy, there weren't many of them and I managed to keep their traffic down with soap, Borax mixed with jelly or sugar water, and occasional smooshings.  Always with a warning, of course, because I don't think it's right to just bump someone off out of the blue.  Yes, I warn the bugs.  I warn mosquitoes, too.  And ticks.  They never listen, but I warn them.

Anyway, these here ants have come back year after year, kind of like the Capistrano swallows but way less nifty and far more scattershot with their timing.  Last year was pretty bad, even with ant baits and continued blarings of Justin Bieber music.  They came earlier and stayed later into the year, but eventually they went away to wherever it is they go to when they go away.

And then, a few scant weeks after they popped off, they came back.

See those two down there?
"Mornin', Hal."
"Mornin', Fred."
Like the sheep dog and the wolf in the old Warner Brothers cartoons.

The one on the right is one of the medium-ish ones.  I couldn't get a photo of one of the big ones...it was too fast for me.  I think it was an enforcer and didn't want media exposure - nothing like having your cover blown.  It may have hissed at me as it dodged into the crack between the cupboard and the dishwasher.  It certainly shook its fist, or whatever the ant equivalent (Antquivalent?  Snerk...) of that is.

They're kind of nifty, in a horrid, my house is being taken over kind of way.  If they would keep to themselves and maybe quit partying into the wee hours, I might not feel the need to do much about them.

However.

They are starting to get impertinent.  ImpertinAnt.  Hah!

Ahem.

The are terribly familiar fellows, making bold to crawl onto my shirt when I'm standing at the counter and eventually making their way onto my arm or neck and tickling me creepily with their six feet.  I was bitten by one, once, without so much as a how-do-you-do!

If they were outside or in one of those semi-two-dimensional farm thingies I bet I'd really enjoy viewing them as they went busily about their...umm...business.

As it stands, the cats aren't amused, the children are tired of brushing ants off of themselves, the spiders are over their diet of ants a la ants, I can't really have guests over because bugs squick most people out, and I have found one too many ants cooked into my dinner because they keep investigating what's cookin' without really thinking about the consequences (oh, goddess, the Fryolator-of-Doom sure does a number on 'em) and I so hate wasting food but I'm not eating steamed or french fried ant, and also I have had one too many uninvited-critter-crawling-on-me moments.

I have called in the big guns. Contrary to my usual philosophy of live and let live, I have scheduled a six-treatment package that will turn Casa de Crazy into a chemical war zone starting on Thursday and continuing for one year.  We will hopefully be ant free, roach free, and scorpion free (Redneck Central is nothing if not well populated with critters and varmints).  I'm sad about the spider loss, but I need to not feel things crawling on me in my sleep, so the spiders have been warned to pack their bags and find buggier climes.

Here's hoping they ants don't carry us off before then!