I confess, I am a murderer. I took out a contract to snuff thousands of innocent lives, and I don’t feel very good about it. But it was them or me, and I was the one with the evolutionary capacity to think this thing through — and the digits to make the call.
When I was a kid growing up in the high-desert back country of Southern California, we often had ants wandering through the house. We called them oak ants. They were tiny and black, and they would sometimes find their way into the sugar bowl, and from there, into our morning cereal. Munching into our Cheerios dripping with syrupy milk, I could look at my sister’s face and tell she had just eaten one. Nothing I’ve ever eaten, voluntarily or not, has ever come close to the sulphury pungency of ant.
Those oak ants used to travel solo. There were other ants outside, larger red ants, that trampled multi-lane highways into the dry yellow grasses around our goat pen. The highways disappeared into mounds of dusty red soil, and if I stepped too close or tarried too long watching to see what bits of treasure they carried, I was likely to be stung on my bare toes, but it hurt no worse than stepping on a sticker.
So last month, when the first few ants made their way into the compost bowl near my kitchen sink, I didn’t think much of it. I put the sugar into the freezer, emptied the compost, and flicked away the single ant crawling up the sleeve of my bathrobe. But the next day there were more, and with each passing day, the size of the ant army grew, and their territory expanded, until we could barely rest a spoon on the counter without it being engulfed.
We began to deposit compost and garbage directly into the outside bins. We encased our dry goods in jars, ziploc bags and tupperware. We wiped down the counter tops multiple times a day, wringing thick black layers of ant from the sponge down the drain. We tried natural remedies. We sprayed, we sprinkled, we baited. We traced the trails, caulked the cracks, sealed the seams. Eventually a new ant road emerged from behind the metal soap tray recessed in the vintage tile of our 1950s shower, and as each ant emerged, it let fall a tiny bit of mortar onto the porcelain tub below, as if they intended to build a new ant city right there in our bathroom.
Let me go on record as saying that I do not approve of killing the creatures that populate our yards. They were here first, and they belong here. I also hate the idea of polluting our surroundings with toxic substances. But it was one thing when the ants were just eating my food, and another when they started to re-purpose my house. In the end, I reluctantly made the call.
The Terminix “technician” arrived later that week. The first thing he did was walk the perimeter of our house with a tank attached to a wand, spraying under the eaves and around the foundation — with no safety protection. No goggles, no mask, no respirator. I had been looking forward to plumbing what I assumed would be his deep well of entomological knowledge, so I asked, “Gee, how dangerous is this stuff for humans, and what’s its mechanism of action in insects?”
Technician: “Oh, it’s not dangerous at all — it’s all natural. In fact, the manufacturer calls it Natural Results.”
Me (with irony): “Oh, if they call it that, it must be perfectly harmless!”
Technician (without irony); “Yes, exactly.”
After he finished with the tank, he got out a little whirly-gig like one might use to distribute fertilizer on a lawn, and he started scattering little pellets, the size of grains of rice, all around my yard. I was somewhat alarmed by this because I frequently have deer visitors, and I saw several of the pellets splash down in a stone basin the deer like to drink from.
Me: “Umm…what’s going to happen if animals drink water with those pellets in it?”
Technician: “I didn’t put any pellets in any water.”
Me: “Yes, some of them went into that stone basin there.”
Technician: “No, I only scattered them on the ground.”
Me (pointing): “I can see a bunch of pellets floating on the surface of the water.”
Technician: “I guess we’d better scoop that out then.”
I didn’t bother asking him what type of ants I had, or how vast their underground colonies are, or what they were planning to do with their stockpile of mortar in my bathroom. I just wrote him a check and waved goodbye, and the next day, my ants were gone, every single one.
I wish there had been another way. I wish, like the deer in my yard, I could have enjoyed their company. I would not have begrudged them a few nibbles from my sugar bowl, or even a little sting on the toe. But they went too far. I shall not be assimilated.