Orkin Schmorkin

Ever since we moved here, we've had trouble with ants. In the summertime I'd see one or two scurrying across the dining room floor, and if I left any crumbs on the counter from lunch I could be sure to see a few more in the kitchen. Ants are probably one of the less offensive leggy-crawly things I know of, but I'm not really a fan of any kind of bug in my house unless it's in a glass jar. So the ants were bugging me. I suspected that they were living somewhere in our rotting sun room, and had high hopes that after it was torn down the ant problem would die down. No such luck. I was right about them living in the rotting sun room, specifically, in a rotting beam, but after the demolition was over the ants felt displaced and decided to go looking for a new home- mine. I was not cool with this. I was really tired of sweeping the dining room floor and then having half of my dust pile get up and crawl away. Now that spring is in full swing, the boys and I have begun planting. My beds aren't ready yet, so I planned on doing some container gardening. I found one of our old ugly containers which I'd more or less neglected last year, and was not shocked to discover it had been taken over by grass. I decided to dump it out and salvage the potting soil from the bottom. Guess what I found when I dumped the container over? Ants. Hundreds and hundreds of them. "Gotcha, f***ers," I said. But very quietly under my breath, so the boys wouldn't hear me. I wasn't sure how to handle ridding myself of the ants, so I popped them back into the container while I plotted their demise. I didn't want to use any spray(it's really nasty stuff), so I decided it would be best if I simply transplanted them to our local woods. I hefted the container into the wheelbarrow and the boys and I trotted it down the street to the walking path, which was when I realized anew the disadvantage to being the family photographer. Jack is very safety-conscious, so he insisted that he and Matteas both hold my hand despite the fact that my hands were plenty occupied with large handfuls of wheelbarrow handle. We were, after all, walking down the actual street. Safety first. So there we were, the three of us trudging down the street in our galoshes(yes, even me) with a magenta wheelbarrow containing a ginormous planter full of vagrant ants, me walking slightly crouched to accommodate the hand of the boy clinging to either side of me. We found a nice rotten stump for them in a woodsy spot and unceremoniously dumped the ants on the ground, then went for a hike through the woods. I find myself learning the same lesson over and over during our Pacific Northwest Springs: go out while it's sunny, because five minutes later it could be hailing. I ran at the gym last night because it was so cold and windy, then this morning was sunny and beautiful. Now the clouds have rolled in and the wind's picked up, so I'm putting the kettle on and feeling really pleased about our morning hike and our eco-friendly ant disposal.