I have ants in my pantry. Lots of them. The other morning Gloria Estefan’s “Rhythm is Gonna Get You” played on my iTunes and the six-legged squatters were conga dancing their way around the kitchen counter.
Choosing to “dominate” them instead of taking a kinder catch and release route, I bought a six-pack of bait traps to annihilate them. It did the trick. A few black stragglers remain, but they are now pretty much gone.
I envision that these few remaining scouts and worker ants return to the nest, where their superiors scold them for not wearing a mask, take their temperature and give them antibody tests to make sure they aren’t carrying something that could cause a pandemic in the colony. These essential workers will be ordered to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Anyway, my exhaustive research shows that these underpaid, mostly non-unionized underlings go in search of food and water to please their egg-laying queen, who sits on her tiny throne eating bon-bons and bossing everyone around. The worker ants will likely find cookie crumbs and stagnant puddles of craft beer in our sink, which they drunkenly try to carry back to the nest. The most handsome male ants, who look a little like Brad Pitt, are called drones and are living the life. They are sought out by the queen for sex, so she can lay more eggs and increase the amount of her federal assistance benefits. Once the deed has been done, the male ants immediately fall asleep while the frustrated queen, who wants to cuddle, puffs on a tiny cigarette.
House invasions by unwanted visitors are nothing new for us. Over the winter, field mice squeezed their way into our 1902 house. Again domination was the route I chose. I would check the wood spring traps every morning and dispose of the critters before my wife awoke and came downstairs. She loves animals of all kinds, and would have opted for rehabilitation instead of death.
Last fall yellow jackets buzzed around our bulkhead. Through draconian measures that involved lots of poison spray and foam sealant, I was able to get rid of them … or so I hope. They might still be hiding in the walls, waiting for a most inopportune time — like when we’re hosting our first post-pandemic social party — to extract revenge on the infidel who dared to infiltrate their kingdom.
Don’t judge me harshly. I’m an animal lover, too. We’ve shared our house with dogs (boxers) and various uncouth friends and neighbors. But ants and mice, no thanks. This spring, the yard is overrun with gray and red squirrels and chipmunks. Do squirrels have a purpose in the world? If so, please let me know what that might be. Chipmunks are cute, but they’ve dug hundreds of tunnels throughout our yard. They must have rented excavation equipment from Landry. I tried to block their entrance points, but eventually gave up; they just dug more.
One of the pluses of this pandemic has been the chance to sit at our backyard patio every morning and watch the wildlife spring to life. We have a small yard, but it borders town conservation land and there are always animals stopping by to say hello.
There’s an old female rabbit, Velveteen, in our yard, who we feed carrots in the winter. She stops by several times a day to snack on the weeds and dandelions that make our lawn look lush. This bunny is a survivor, having lived through an attack of some kind. She looks like hell — she hops with a limp due to a bad rear leg, and her left ear is split down the middle. But a couple of weeks ago she had babies, and the cuties pay us daily visits too.
We have a birdbath that has to be filled several times a day. The wrens and cardinals and finches sit on the rim and politely sip the water. But the robins and grackles and blue jays dive right in and splash around as if they’re preparing for a romantic date with their sweetie. Maybe we should leave shampoo, a bar of soap and exfoliating lotions to make sure they look their best.
Groundhogs and moles and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have also appeared in our yard. We shoo them away with a minimum of effort.
We love the bunnies and the birds, but we also have coyotes and hawks, including one foul-tempered hawk that spends every day targeting our birds and bunnies. It recently swooped down and grabbed a full-grown rock dove that was mindlessly pecking for worms and grubs in the grass. We watched with amazement as the hawk flew up to a branch on a dead tree, put a little salt and pepper on its dinner, and gorged itself while dozens of starlings circled around it while making an unholy racket.
I expect that I’ll soon be closing my backyard “office” and returning to Item headquarters in downtown Lynn. I will miss spending quality time each day with our animal friends. The bird bath will probably be empty by the time I get home from work, and the bunnies will soon be grown and gone.
But those ants and mice and yellow jackets are being put on notice: Don’t even think about returning or I’ll be forced to call in the National Guard.
