Captain Cavedweller and I have been doing some work in our backyard. On a scale of one to ten, it’s probably about seventeen on the “disaster” scale.
We’ve been trying to kill a bunch of marauding Bermuda grass before we replant the lawn. In the meantime, I think the neighbor’s horses sprinkled thistle seeds over one fence while trees from the neighbors on the other side of us have sent up shoots everywhere.
Anyway, yesterday I was working along the fence where some unwanted cottonwood trees have sprung up. After I shared the unfolding events with CC and he finished laughing at me, he made me promise to blog about it today.
While I was digging away to remove those little trees, I felt something on my leg. I didn’t give it much thought and kept digging. Then I felt more little somethings on my leg and glanced down to find I’d disturbed an ant nest that was occupied by approximately a bajillion of the little black devils, all intent on crawling up my legs.
If any of our neighbors were watching, I’m pretty sure they got quite a show as I stomped and twisted, turned and shook. They may have assumed I was bustin’ out some party moves from the eighties or was trying to invent a new form of line dancing. But I had ants in my pants.
It put me in mind of the time I had a similar experience as a young Farm Girl. Only my excuse then was I was distracted by a cute boy. My excuse yesterday was I was distracted thinking about the shenanigans I wanted to create for the cute boy in the book I’m writing.
After rushing in the house and taking care of the problem, I went back outside armed with ant spray and saturated the whole area.
I waited awhile, went back outside and started back to work only to have the ants appear in a new location right below my feet.
Skipping the dance moves, I went right to evacuation and sent CC a text asking him to bring home some heavy duty ant killer. I returned to my office, ready to get back to work on the book with the cute boy, when I suddenly realized not all the rogue ants were accounted for. Some had cleverly escaped detection and were crawling their way upward.
The remainder of the day, every time anything touched my skin (be it my hair, the breeze, etc.) I jumped like a scalded cat. Apparently, this provided much amusement for my husband once he arrived home with the ant poison.
Lesson learned: from now on, CC gets to do all the work in the backyard if there is the slightest possibility ants might be present.
