Not ants like back in Cali: long trails of relatively beefy ants, traceable back to some source and eventually eradicable. No, no.
These are smaller, faster critters that seem to appear out of thin air (trail schmail) and multiply exponentially while you are watching. I've had them come suddently pouring out of the overflow gap in the bathroom sink when I was brushing my teeth - redolent of an over-affected horror movie. I've had them camoflauged in a pile on my kitchen counter (which is a dark corian-like marbly design anyway), keeping possum-still such that I thought it was a big crumb. Went to brush it off and they exploded in a frenzy of ant-y antics... yikes!
But today.... oh, today took the cake.
As you can see from above, the ants appear willy-nilly in odd places around the house. We had noticed they seemed to get into our new printer, because we could see them in the LED screen.
Oh, ha ha, isn't that funny? Boy, those guys will just get into anywhere.
But soon (days later), the 3-5 ants that we could see scurrying around in the window were looking suspiciously like 10 or more. Hmm...I even printed something and there was a little flattened ant carcass on the page.
This might not be so good afterall. We should investigate further. So Michael opened up some flaps and looked around and... oh dear... there seemed to be a plethora of ants!
So we took the printer out to the deck and started banging & shaking & trying to knock the ants out. Insufficient. We started dismantling the thing, and every new uncovered crevice and cranny turned out to be infested (yes, infested) with ants and ant eggs. To wit...
The more we took apart and uncovered, the more we found. We vacuumed and dug into little nooks with Q-tips soaked in windex. And the whole time, of course, they are all trying to furiously move the eggs to a safer place and/or just get away themselves. Who knew that ant-eggs, when brushed off a table top, are actually wet and slightly milky?
I mentioned dismantling the copier? Boy, did we. I think Michael could hire himself out as a repair man at this point.
Believe it or not, Michael then spent the better part of an hour (while on a work call) doing part-to-part recon, playing Navy Seal, infiltrating every possible hidey-hole armed with Q-tips, a vaccuum and a bottle of ant spray. Then he had to put the damn thing back together again.
So we are feeling pretty proud of
ourselves. We have, once again, met the creepy crawly devil and emerged victorious.
... my head kind of itches. Yours?
I always knew Hawaii was famous for its bugs, but that is ridiculous. What drew them to the printer to begin with? Now that I think of it, we've never had an ant problem in Petaluma. Don't know why? Termites, yes, ants, no. All is well here. Hank still looking forward to retirement and to the "theater" this summer that goes by the name: Republican National Convention. Doing a little volunteering on the Huffman campaign for Nick (petition signings to get him on ballot and a bit of recon of other candidates. Sound familiar?) Was near 70 yesterday! Hard to believe this is February. Almost as nice as Maui. Petaluma House looks great from my front window. Neighbors stick pretty much to themselves. Cleo keeping it tidy. More later. Off to walk the dogs. How is Kona? Still improving? Lov ya!
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