Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Ants Go Marching...

Every summer we have an infestation of ants. It's a Bay Area/California/Anywhere where it is hot and dry Thing. Yesterday Padyn was playing outside in her little pool. A colony of ants has made the pool their personal watering hole. They were marching furiously towards my garage (yikes!), right past her pool, carrying something white that I'm sure was very yummy in their little ant tummies. The ones taking a break were hanging out on the side of the pool. Some had even decided to go for a swim. (Those ones won't be doing much more marching.) Padyn didn't seem to notice them much. (Shocking, as there were like 20 million of them, but she is a bit obsessed with water, so she was distracted.)

After playing for a while, she came up to me (I was reading other peoples' blogs outside on the laptop. I love the laptop!) and told me there was a bug on her and would I get it off. I looked, and sure enough, there was on ant crawling on her shin...and calf, and thigh, arm, hand, stomach, foot...basically all over. Even in her hair. She had about 6 crawling around her blond locks. I looked over at the marching ant line only to see ants frantically scurrying every which way. Poor guys. She had stepped right on their trail. She must have stood in it for awhile for them to get all the way up in her hair.

Calmly, while my insides were screaming, "Yuck, Yuck, get them off!" I picked them one by one off her little body. (I first tried rinsing them off with water, but they hung on tight.) Of course during this process I got a few on myself. Nothing like having a couple ants to make you feel like you have something crawling on you the rest of the day. In fact, as I write this, I swear I can still feel them.

Maybe that's because I also found them on the laptop yesterday in the family room.

And next to the toy box going after what I can only assume was a Cheerio crumb.

And climbing the wall in the downstairs bathroom.

Did I tell you I hate ants?

4 comments:

Erin said...

Good grief, makes me like Florida's hot, humid weather. Until I start thinking about the OTHER bugs that kind of weather brings in...

Lisa (the girls' moma) said...

Great. Now I'm itchy.

Were they biting her or just crawling on her? You didn't mention any screaming, so I assume no biting was involved. That's good.

threeforme said...

No biting, just crawling.

Cozy Mom said...

Thank for the good laugh. I can't feel too bad for you, after all we have ants too bur we could never have sat outside in the middle of the day playing, even in the pool it is just too stinking hot! It is midnight here and I'm still waiting for the cool outside breeze to decide to grace us with its presence.