This week I'll be mostly eradicating ants

Sing along (to the tune of the
Pink Panther) 'Dead ant, dead ant,
dead ant dead ant dead ant
dead ant dead annnt'

Maybe Bill Bailey has a point when he suggests "the creatures of this earth will rise up and take what is rightfully theirs", and then goes on to sing "Human slaves, In an insect nation!" (If you don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about, see here.)

I've been a bit paranoid about insects invading the house ever since The Terrible Incident of The Donut In the Bin In the Front Room That the Ants Discovered. Although the fear probably stems back to childhood memories of staying in a holiday home (in the Isle of Wight, I think) where me and Steve spent what seemed like a whole week, pouring boiling water down ants nests outside the back door. Personally, I wonder if it actually is all a result of those Killer Ants and Killer Bees movies in the 70s. That's got to have some kind of psychological effect. That, and the Doctor Who Planet of the Spiders episodes from 1974.



A few weeks ago there was this line of ants making their way through the kitchen window. How dare they? I swept them up and whacked down a bit of ant powder, as you do. The next day they're coming in round the back of the radiator in the front room. I got the hoover out and then chucked a nice thick line of ant powder down round the back of the rads. A day or two later they're outside the back door. Right then! I took a stiff broom to them, then bunged even more ant powder down, tons of the stuff, in a trail right round the side of the conservatory. A couple of days after that they're coming in the front door. At this point we had to go down B&Q to stock up the ant power supply.

It all went quiet for a week, and I thought maybe we had the house back to ourselves. I thought too soon. There was a trail of them in the lounge, just making their way across the carpet as if they owned the place. Now I was proper cross. I hoovered them up, then sat and waited to see where they were coming from. About half hour later it was fairly obvious they were coming in somewhere around the edge of the patio doors. They were really asking for it now. I got the carpet up, hoovered some more, got the underlay up, hoovered even more, then ran a huge thick line of ant powder round the skirting board and under the patio doors. For good measure I wrote 'Die ants die' in ant powder, then put the carpet back down.

That does seem to be doing the trick. There's still a load of them outside round the patio, but outside, well there's no point in trying, I mean, where do you stop? For now, at least, we seem to have avoided becoming "Human slaves, In an insect nation! Ahh ah ah ah ahh."