Rain Water and Advice

Some parts of this poor state, which last year was suffering one of its worst droughts on record, got 20 inches of rain in 3 days. That's flippin' nuts.

Though schools were closed in the county where we live, we did not suffer any flood damage. Our yard was pretty good and messed up, but our house is ok.

You know, you don't really think about the nature of shelter very much until your sitting in your warm, cozy and dry home. You don't really think about the fact that other little critters might also think your warm, cozy and very dry home looks pretty neat-o from the wet, wet, wetness of the wet, rainy outside.

My home is being invaded by ants. Every time I turn around there is another trail of ants. I guess they are coming in to find food because it's too wet outside. I do a decent job of protecting the house from bugs and such - I haven't had an ant problem for a couple of years - but the outside deluge has made risk of poison seem reasonable to the six legged monarchs of the surrounding yard and they've sent their armies to march. I've probably killed a thousands ants in the last two days. About 200 to 300 in my house. At one point I got so angry I went outside, found an anthill near my house and rained fire and brimstone down on it. In the form of Raid.

Another thing you might not realize is that ants are very fast. For their size they can move. One of our dogs got in the trash at 6pm. We caught him, stopped him before he was able to track the food all over the house, and cleaned it up. But we missed a small spot of food. When I noticed it at 7pm it was covered in ants; probably 20. And my son's book bag was set down at 6pm also. He got his homework out of it shortly after that. Then when he returned his homework at 8pm the handful of crumbs left over from his snack had attracted between 50 and 100 ants. That's when I blew up and destroyed an ant town.

It's just amazing to me how quickly they can be in your house and marching all over everything.


So, take my advice:

If you spill some honey on your pajamas before you go to bed, change shirts. Otherwise the ants will drag you away while your wife is sleeping and no one will ever know what happened to you.

Oh, and do the dishes before you go to bed.

And check your kids' book-bags for left over snack.

And vacuum one more time, even if it might wake the kids.

And clean the toothpaste of the counter. Ants love that stuff.

And spray a little bit of poison on the outside of the threshold, even though that's probably not how the ants are getting in.

And a light dusting around the garbage for good measure.

And wipe the kitchen table down.

And mop the floor.

But DON'T obsess over this.