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The Ant Trilogy- Part III

Posted by Christine on July 20, 2010 in Animals, customer service, Nature |

Internet, in the last episode of this daytime soap opera that I call my life, we were frantically making phone calls to exterminators in hopes of getting rid of the crunchy insects that were dwelling all over my kitchen. Initially when I found the little buggers, my husband and I thought they were fire ants (fiesta time) and a good ol’ search on Wikipedia informed me that fire ants are deadly to felines. Excellent, cause we need another wrench in this entire trilogy.

So….in between making phone calls to exterminators, I called my mother and asked if she would mind picking up our very curious toddler who wanted to roll around with the ants like a pig in the mud and our cat, Ninja, who could potentially die if he suddenly got jumped by a rogue group of fire ants. Probably rebellious teenage ones, with crowbars and face paint.  I digress.  Luckily my mother was not busy and agreed to come over and pick up these little packages of mischief.

BUT WAIT….it gets better. I was about to put Ninja into his travel carrier when my husband suggested that we give him a bath. WTF MATE, DO YOU HAVE IT OUT FOR ME? A cat in water? I have a better idea, let’s cut the tips of my fingers off and call it a day. I’ll even let you nickname me stubs from now on. His reasoning was this; my parents also have a cat and what if one of the fire ants decided to be like a pirate stowaway on Ninja and grab on to his fur for dear life, travel to my parent’s house, and build a brand new colony there. DEVIOUS. My husband often tells me I have a wild imagination, but he concocted this story himself.

We ended up giving Ninja a bath. Then he looked like a rat, but he was fire ant free. My mom picked up both animals and we continued on our search for an exterminator. We finally came to the conclusion that nobody was coming to help us resolve the ants for that day and made an appointment for Monday afternoon.  For the next two days I stood guard with my hand vac and would suck up any dastardly ant I saw.

My husband had setup the appointment with the exterminator and had discussed the methods that he was going to use to get rid of the ants so I really wasn’t aware until after the fact and Whoa. Originally my philosophy was “I don’t care if you need to use an atom bomb, get rid of them” but that was sorta based on emotion. I think the exterminator sort of took that literally and ran. When we described the ant infestation to him, what the ants were after, how small they were, and showed him pictures, he immediately informed us they were not in fact fire ants, but instead pharaoh ants; commonly called sugar ants also and they are harmless. GOOD F’IN THING I GAVE THE CAT A BATH.

When I got home from work on Monday I arrived to papers that described what the exterminator had used. Listen Lady, you could kind of call it overkill. On the inside he put down a pesticide gel in the corners and cracks and then he put down peanut butter scented bait traps all over the house.  On the outside he put down a granular pesticide all over the base of the foundation and he then sprayed another pesticide two feet up on the house.

Don’t get me wrong, we certainly got a lot for the price, but remember the police academy movies, where all the cadets used revolvers and then Tackleberry pulls out like an AK-47 and mows everyone down? That’s sort of how I felt about this exterminator. One of the pesticides the guy put down is so strong that he had to give us a paper that we have to keep in case the State Health Department were to come to our House so we could prove that we didn’t trade one of Brett’s kidneys on the black market for it.

The good news is that we haven’t seen a single ant in our house since this weekend. I think my “atom bomb” reference made an impact. So if anyone needs a reference for an exterminator, I know a good one.

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