“Take a lesson from the ant, you lazy fellow.
Learn from their ways and be wise!
For though they have no king to make them work,
yet they labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter.”
Proverbs 6:6
Today I have been considering the ant! There is a lot of truth and wisdom in the words penned by the wise king Solomon. However, these industrious little critters have invaded my kitchen counter in full force, calling out all reserves. The temperatures soared up into the 60’s today and the heat wave must have woken them up from their long winter’s nap. Or just maybe they didn’t gather enough food for the winter and got hungry!
At first I tried catching each one and washing them down the drain. I wasn’t drowning them, just sending them to the depths of never, never land. I soon decided I was losing that battle strategy and also had to go to work. The busy little critters were scurrying everywhere. I watched them for a few minutes as they raced across the counter as if they owned the place. They would meet another soul-mate, stop, shoot the breeze a few seconds before kissing and running off in search of food. Were they telling another scout where the food source was? Someone must have been sending signals back to their nest as I soon had hundreds of them acting like they had been given an occupancy permit to my kitchen.
I decided it was time for full scale ant war-fare. I got out my trusted bottle of “Terro Ant Killer” and put a dap of the thick, gooey, sweet stuff on a piece of tin-foil, carefully placing it where they seemed to be having a “committee meeting”. Within minutes they were feasting and inviting fellow ants to the dessert bar.
I have to admit they are interesting to watch. They circle the glob of poison in orderly fashion like they are feasting at a banquet table. After drinking their fill, they leave and run back to their nest somewhere in the depths of the crawl space under our house where they store up the “food” to eat at a later time. On the run back to the nest they again meet and greet fellow travelers.
I will leave the poison out for about five days so they can store up sufficient “ammunition” in their nest for the kill. As long as I leave the papers out, they will continue to “tote and store”. When I remove the papers, the ants will also disappear, returning to the nest to enjoy their “stored” feast. This battle I will win!
