Ant Invasion

Just in case you were wondering, I hate ants. HATE them. After living with hordes of them in Thailand (massive fire ants, big black ones, brown ones, little fast ones, etc....) you'd think I would have learned to handle them. I did learn to cope with them, but I never thought I'd have to live with them again. Apparently, that was not correct. We have ants here. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. We were free of them until last week. There's a litte space at the entrance to the apartment complex where all the mailboxes are along with a garbage can. I don't know what someone put in the garbage, but it attracted ants. Lots of them...for several days. It was so yucky to me, that I would go out of the way and walk up the stairs so I didn't have to go through that. This may seem like a simple thing, but when you're carrying Hannah and groceries those stairs get very long. Anyway, after those ants appeared, we found some in our place. Yuck!

Day 1: A few were found wandering around. That means trouble. We learned in Thailand if there's 1 you might be okay - it could be a scavenger. If you see 2 you're in trouble - there are lots more hiding somewhere close.
Day 2: We find the motherload - they're coming out of a little whole in our wall near our door and walking along the floor boards trying to find somehwere else to go or something to eat. James kills them. Hannah and I evacuate while the fumes fade.
Day 3: We find a couple in our bathroom. Bathroom? Stupid ants. There's nothing for them to eat in the bathroom...and it's easy to just wash them down the drain. Anyway. James found another hole where they were coming in from the floor below us.
Day 4: I'm on the lookout and don't see any. We think we've beaten the battle.
Day 5: We find some in our hall closet. We pull everything out. Fumigate. Let the fumes clear out and then put everything back in...

We are now to day 7 and I haven't seen one since day 5. Hoorray. I'm still on the look out. Actually, I'm always on the lookout. I have the eyes for ants. I can spot them accross the room with my glasses off. It's a talent I've had lots of practice developing while James has become a professional exterminator. I'm hoping we're clear of them, but we shall see. I do take some satisfaction in knowing they never found any little crumbs to feed themselves off of in our apartment. However, it does make me a little nervous about the people the live below us and what we have crawling around in the walls...I'm not going to think about it. Anyway, this may seem like a very long post about ants. It is. Because I HATE them, and we have nothing else going on to report.