Ants, ants, ants

I'm kind of in a random thoughts mood about ants probably because..they're everywhere and I have a bunch of bites.

They're everywhere. Springtime and summer mean ants in South Carolina. I think Lowe's has an entire aisle devoted to ant killing products. I walk around my yard and treat mound after mound only to walk around the next day and find more. I have this idea in my head, that the ants are burrowing one gigantic mound under the concrete slab that my house is built on. They are tunneling away deeper and deeper. Then one day, a little shake of the planet, a nudge of plate tectonics, will cause the collapse of the ant world under our house and the whole house will kaboom! sink down three or four feet. I'll open the door to be greeted with three feet of dirt staring at me - with tunnels like you see in an art farm full of frantic ants trying to escape.

I think about this when I'm standing in the shower and an ant walks across the ceiling. Or when things like this happen....you turn on the bath tub and ants come running out of the spigot before the water begins. The pipes? They're in the pipes! I am grateful they prefer the bathrooms over the kitchen but really, why are they here at all? Everyone can tell you why the ants try to come into the house... it's because it's so dry, they're looking for water, unless it has rained recently and then it's because it's so wet, and they want a dry spot. Hell, the ants aren't stupid, it's summer in South Carolina, I'm betting they just want the air conditioning.

The ants coming out of the bath tub spigot happened to Youngest. That was a really cruel happening because Youngest has always had a little fear of ants. I'm not sure where it came from but as a toddler, he would get very frightened when there were ants around. With that in mind, imagine my horror when for some reason we were at the Atlanta Airport with Youngest in his stroller and I looked up there at the baggage claim and on the ceiling was a traveling art exhibit, a sculpture kind of thing, of enormous, million times larger than life ANTS! What's everybody's favorite keep the baby in the stroller quiet trick? Why, tilt him backwards, of course... oh noo... keep him looking down at the floor! Whatever you do- do not tilt the baby backwards to see the GIGANTIC ANTS! What a day.

And my final ant thought is how much ant bites hurt and itch. I stepped in a mound the other day. I frantically swiped them off my shoes and dug them out of my socks and thought I had done a good job. But later I realized that a few must have gotten past me and Ihave bites. Not on the feet, not on the ankles, not near the knees,...I have bites up where my bathing suit stops. (No don't think bikini line, my bathing suit stops where the ruffled skirt ends a good three-six inches below the bikini line!) I have three bites just high enough up that scratching them in public is verboten. So, of course, all I want to do is scratch and then go kill more ants.