The other day I noticed a couple of ants in my kitchen.
Not thinking too much about it I squished them, cleaned the area, and moved on with my day. These couple of ants didn’t concern me much at the time, mainly because I had just woken up and wasn’t thinking at my full capacity. My mistake…
Later than evening Dad stopped by my apartment to drop off some stuff and to say hi. I mentioned the ants, and then when we both looked in the kitchen I noticed that there was a steady stream of them making their way back and forth from the base of my screen door to my kitchen. I don’t know how I didn’t notice them before. Upon seeing the ants I was instantly squeamish and in tears.
Now before you make any judgments, I want it known that I am not usually that squeamish about bugs. But the situation was made worse by the fact that I had worked the night before, and had only slept for about 4 hours that morning when I got home. Being sleep-deprived can make a situation seem so much worse!
At home we had to deal with the occasional mouse in the house. Living in the country has its downsides, and that is one of them. Every time we had a mouse sighting I would panic internally. The thought of something like a mouse crawling around, unseen for the most part, absolutely creeped me out! I would sleep with a fan on for noise if there was a mouse around, just so I couldn’t hear the scratching of their little feet if they happened to come in my room…if the mouse was actually in my room. Which they usually were, since my room tended to be a bit… um… “cluttered.” And even if they weren’t really in my room, I always thought that they were, because I would psych myself out!
My Dad was wonderful. He helped me kill what ants we could at the time, and even though it was getting late and he was tired from work, he took me to the store to buy ant traps. Back at my apartment he set them up while I hunted every solitary ant I could find with my my thumb and a bottle of hairspray.
At the end of the night my kitchen floor and baseboards had ants shellacked with hairspray, and there were ants squished all over the counter and oven. But hey… that’s the price I chose to pay for peace of mind that night!
A Special Strength 