3/23/2018

Bathroom ants refuse to Brexit

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae, tiny socialist insects belonging to the European Union and colonizing my bathroom just as they do early every spring. You can set your calendar by their arrival, and pretty much nothing will hasten their departure, not TSA-Pre, and not those nice young men in their clean white coats.



We admitted we were powerless over hormigas and our lives had become unmanageable. Every March my big powerful rent-paying, lease-signing sanity is brought to its knees by these tiny black ants in the bathroom.  They show up first as a reminder of flashbacks warnings from Seventies high school health teachers. "We aren't really here. Nanny nanny boo boo!" Little spots before my eyes.

Getting home after six, the ants have become proud, brave, and bold. They are marching around in the white porcelain parade grounds of tub and sink. Their homemade banners proclaim they are not figments or flashbacks, and are not covered by vision insurance.

I press my fists to my closed eyelids. Inside the optical theater the ants appear vibrating orange against blue, then energized lilac against white. Rothko meets Orkin. The ants are colluding. I can't delete them.  They have Twitter and facebook accounts, and I am their hostage.

Apartment management sent The Pest Guy. He told me it would get a lot worse before it gets better. The ants circled his bait like frat pledges at a kegger. Indeed, it began to look like ant Woodstock as more and more arrived to partake of the electric Kool-aid, and wander around in circles before (according to the pest guy) taking the bait back to share at their hormiga commune.

The library has two new rock concert DVDs--"The Doors Live at the Bowl '68," and the "Monterey Pop Festival." It wouldn't be much trouble to show videos for the tiny ants in the bathroom, and the project might keep me from smashing them with my guitar or lighting them on fire. I could just turn out the lights and shut the door. Maybe tomorrow morning it will just have been a one of those health class flashbacks.


When the music's over
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights, yeah



And thanks so much to Farmer Derek for his satellite image of cows saying, "hi."


© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

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