Red Ants

This evening I’m sitting on my back porch, watching my cats roll in the dirt and the grass sway gently in the wind. I’m sitting here and wondering how such a scene could go so . . .wrong.

I pride myself on my love of all life, of respecting the earth and everything that lives on it (with the possible exception of spiders) and yet here, on my first bit of ground that is officially mine; I have already sinned. I have waged a bloody war and lost bitterly.

“What is this war?” You ask.

“Red Ants.” I sadly reply.

Those little creatures have brought me to this wretched state. We have a BIG nest of them in the back corner of our yard. The same place where I intend to have some sort of glorious garden; clearly the ants had to go as we couldn’t coexist peacefully as I dug in the dirt. . . so much for respect of nature.

The hitch here is that I’m pretty adamant about pesticides, herbicides, suicides, whatever. None of that in my back yard please, I have cats.

So I read online that with about 3 gallons of boiling water, you could eradicate an anthill once and for all. Sounded great, perhaps not entirely sensible when thinking about the boiling and transportation of 3 gallons of water – but I was not concerned about such things. This website is not about sensibility, it’s about magic. But, even so, this idea was neither of those two things.

So off I went, and Greg (my game-for-anything husband) decided to help. Took forever to boil the water, and it was probably a maximum of 2 gallons, not 3. (who has pots that big when there are only 2 of you?!) Out the back door we CAREFULLY went, a pot in each hand. About halfway out there I discovered that my right wrist is significantly weaker than my left, and had to leave 1 pot in the middle of the backyard lest I eradicate my foot along with the ants. We poured the searing water slowly down the hole, and the results were devastating. The good news is I don’t think they hardly felt a thing, but heavens, it was effective. For good measure Greg took a shovel and dug up the dirt a bit and we poured more water down. Aside from a handful of ants that weren’t at the pile when the massacre happened. . .there was no movement. Feeling slightly guilty I headed back inside.

The next morning I went out to check the hill. They managed to dig a tunnel in the night and miraculously find survivors. I admired them, it was impressive, I boiled more water and poured it down the new hole. Still they surface. I’ve turned into a ruthless, cunning murderer – much like those serial killers I read about in crazy novels. It bothers me a bit, all those poor ants, but I have no time to dwell on it. I have more water to put on the stove. . .their numbers are quite large today. . . .