I’m not a particularly bug-phobic person. The other day at the National Zoo, there was a spider crawling on my hand (maybe it escaped from an exhibit :-)). Rather than shriek, I carefully found a place for him in the bushes. I don’t like flies in my car, but I’m glad to open a window and let them out rather than squish them.
Ants, though, that’s another story. The problem with those little buggers is that you might see one or two on the kitchen counter one day, and the next, they’re swarming over everything. Then it’s out with the ant poison.
Although I search and destroy inside ants, I tend to take a live and let live attitude with the outside variety. That’s if they agree to the detente. If not, it’s every insect and woman for themselves.
One day I’d just ridden my horse, and decided to let her graze on some lush green grass. She’s a nicely trained horse, so I just dropped the lead rope and let her pull it along the ground as she ate.
When snack time was over, I picked up the lead rope which had been dragging through the grass. Moments later I felt a stinging on my wrist. Eew, a big black ant. I brushed it off. I then realized there were many black ants crawling all over my shirt. I slapped them away. Felt more on my neck. Got pretty frantic, dancing around popping off ants, threw off my shirt (I had a sports bra underneath), shook it out, examined every inch of fabric. Phew. No ants.
Put the shirt back on, then the barn owner came out. I told her what had happened and she starts slapping ants off me. Strip off the shirt again, shake, shake, shake, dance, dance, dance. Finally, finally, I am ant-free. I unclipped the offending lead rope from my mare and led her to her stall holding her halter.
When I got home, I showered, of course. Darned if another ant didn’t wash down the drain. Brr.
Another close encounter involved the mailbox. When I went out to get the paper, I checked the mailbox. A Netflix envelope…decorated with ants. I picked up the envelope to shake off the ants and OMG! A zillion ant eggs had been laid overnight under the Netflix envelope and ants were swarming all over the eggs.
Cue the tingly pricklies (not the good kind). I ran for the hose and blasted the inside of the mailbox for about an hour (okay, just a couple of minutes) until I was pretty sure all those ants and eggs had vacated. Then I got the RAID and sprayed a barrier around the supporting post of the mailbox.
A few ants returned, probably wondering what had happened to their progeny (and yeah, I felt a little guilty about that). For a while, I was checking every morning to make sure we weren’t hosting an insect kindercare in our mailbox. And it also took a while to finally stop feeling ants crawling on my skin.
So, any good creepy crawly stories out there? Close encounters of the insect kind? Do share.
(Addendum: I do have a roach story. It involves a microwave. And the fact that microwaves do not bother a roach one whit)