Silent Spring...



We try to be as Earth-Friendly as possible at our house. We're diligent about recycling. We use compact fluorescents where the zombie-esque color of the light and the humming won't bother us (basement and garage primarily). We reduced the amount of thirsty turf in our yard by about half several years ago and now have landscaping consisting mostly native plants that don't need much water.

All that is my way of justifying the rather ridiculous amount of chemicals I sprayed around the outside of the house on Saturday to get rid of some carpenter ants that have invaded our home. By nightfall our side porch looked like Ant Judgement Day. Muah ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Neither of us has yet grown extra appendages, began projectile vomiting our internal organs, or become a walking tumor, so I guess the amount I sprayed was just shy of mutagenic.

And before anyone posts some ant-hugging comment about how one can should make peace with the ants, or suggests some "green" alternative (which won't work, I don't care what you say, if I poured vinegar on an ant hill those ants would just make vinaigrette). I'd like to point out that they started it by crawling on my leg when I was sleeping. Any bug that crawls on you when you're trying to sleep is just asking for it. The ant-gauntlet was thrown down, and I responded with vigor, as only a chemist can.

It would be nice if they'd just die all at once though. We're getting a little tired of vacuuming up all the corpses. Brian thinks that some evening we're going to go out on our side porch to find an enormous, huge, giant pissed-off mega-ant made entirely out of ants that will totally kick our asses. I'll keep some Raid handy just in case. I'm not walking out there unarmed. They may be down, but I'm not sure we've seen the last of them.

Better living through chemistry. And by living, I mean me, not them.

Posted: Mon - June 1, 2009 at 10:36 AM        

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