Oooh, Yummy!

. . . If you're an ant with a death wish.

Got a call about 8:40 this morning. It was Grover*, the pest control guy: "Hi, I know I'm supposed to come on Monday, but I've had a cancellation this morning, is it all right if I come now?"

Oh, sure, sure. Sooner the ants get out of my kitchen, my woodpile, and my life, the better.

So in about a half hour, Grover* appeared in his bright red truck wearing his bright red shirt, and, after duly saluting my dog, went to work in the back garden laying down some kind of super-pyrethrum ant bait.

While I proceeded to feed the animals and clean out the litter boxes and do my usual morning routine.

When all of a sudden it hit me: Oh my gosh, he's going to need to put ant bait in my pantry and the shelves are sticky dirty filthy!

All right, it's not supposed to be that way. But cooking oil and honey and Worcester-shire sauce have a way of, well, migrating. And leaving their marks on the shelves. And the idea is that the ants take the bait, not keep hanging out in their traditional local, Ye Olde Honey Staine.

So I frantically got to work unloading the shelves and wiping them down, hoping I could get it done before Grover* finished outside so I wouldn't hold up the show. And wiping down the counters and backsplashes so they could be treated, too.

He was kind of treading on my toes as I finished up, but I had the kitchen ready in time. This is what the bait looks like in the pantry:

It comes out of a little plunger tube, like clear toothpaste. And the ants, as you can see, find it deelicious.

Too bad for them, little buggers. It doesn't kill them immediately; they track it back to the nest and infect everybody else first. The bait put down outside works on the same principle. Grover* tells me it'll take ten days to two weeks to kill them all, but it's a lot more effective than a repellant or contact poison.

Here's what was put down in the woodpile, around both trees, and in the big stump:

I'm glad to get the process started, sooner than later. There is an irony about it, though. I had outpatient surgery yesterday, and I was told I wasn't supposed to do any work today. Cleaning out cabinets isn't quite work, is it? I mean, not when you really have to do it?

So why do I feel tireder than one of those perishing little ants?