As a new homeowner, I obviously knew nothing about maintaining a yard. Sure, like every other boy growing up, I learned early on that a lawnmower is a very efficient launching mechanism for everything in its path, including sprinkler heads and mangoes. (As a side note, it is also an equally efficient producer of confetti though as a suggestion, only use your newspapers in experimenting.) But as entertaining as that was, when you actually own the house, it loses some of the humorous appeal and it certainly doesn’t teach you anything useful except the escape velocity needed for a mango to puncture screen.
As a result, my backyard needed a lot of help. One thing that a sandlot in South Florida does with ease is attract three quarters of the planet’s ant population. It got so bad that once, while watching a particularly loud movie, I had a knock on the door. The ants were polite enough, but I was still shaken when they asked me to turn down the sound as it was making the larvae cry.
I’m unsure as to why they were so worried about their young as they seemed to have a complete disregard for life and committed mass ritual suicide on a daily basis. Normally this wouldn’t be a bad thing, on the contrary, if they are killing themselves, that’s less ant killer I need buy. Unfortunately it was the manner in which or rather, where, they were doing it that was, well, inconvenient. I would go out and see large dark spots floating on the surface of the pool. Apparently fire ants can’t swim very well but no one told them. Out comes the skimmer and no sooner do I have the pool looking swimable but I see a family of 40,000 ready for a day at the beach, complete with sun visors and paddleball. If you listened hard enough, you could hear a little “yippee!” as they dove in. I was not amused.
Off I go to the local DIY store to buy $9504 worth of pesticides. Even after explaining I had the equivalent of an Asian communist country living in my yard, each person I spoke with assured me “absolutely, this will take care of your problem” in anything but a reassuring voice. I imagine Donald Rumsfeld used the same line in the same voice when Bush asked, “This will this get rid of terrorism, right?”
Back to the house armed with enough pesticide that I had an FBI cruiser following me to make sure I didn’t do anything silly. I sprayed the yard, I put down granules, I told them jokes and served jelly doughnuts, anything to make the ants go away.
Now, this all may sound as though I’m being prejudicial against the ants which couldn’t be further from the truth. I fully supported a peaceful cohabitation agreement with one stipulation – stay out of the damn pool! They weren’t holding up their end of the bargain and I sure as hell wasn’t going to offer swimming lessons, so it was all out war.
So after turning my yard into a scaled-down Chernobyl, I waited. A whole weekend passed quietly. I was so happy that I almost hung a “Mission Accomplished” banner in the backyard. Then Monday rolled around and the resistance started. After a week of having to go through a checkpoints to get into my house, I said enough and rang my friendly pest control company. The rates were reasonable and I was assured total annihilation. Cool. One thing that was a little disconcerting about the service, however, was the line drawn between inside and out. A separate policy is required for inside service versus outside. I needed clarification, so I asked, “So are spiders covered?”
“No sir, not if they are inside” replied the pest man. “You only have outside plan. If you want, I can get someone to appear incredibly friendly and proceed to throw numbers at you until your bank account cries Uncle. He could work up something for you.” He might not have said that exactly.
“I see,” I replied, “But what if I have giant spiders attacking my house?”
He took in a deep breath and replied slowly, “If they are outside, you could schedule an appointment and we’d come out to take care of them.”
“But what if they get inside?”
“Then you would need an inside plan.”
I didn’t get a reassuring sense of urgency from his explanation and realized I would be on my own with only an improvised WD40 flamethrower to ward off the hoards of alien spiders. I began to deduce this “pest control” business was suspect and made a mental note to stock up on WD40.
A few days later a very nice man arrived with a truck the size of Wisconsin. He said he would spray the yard and that if I had any animals, it would be safe for them within 2 hours. His HazMat suit did little to convince me of the validity of this statement but as I don’t have any animals that I call my own, it made no difference. I did wonder if the feral cats in the neighborhood were smart enough to read the signs before treading across my yard to drink from the large water dish I call a pool.
So spray he did. Sure enough, within 3 hours, my yard resembled an apocalyptic movie set – I was the only living thing as far as the eye could see, which is about to my fence line. I took a pause to ponder the mass genocide I had just inflicted. I fell to my knees in my backyard, grabbed two handfuls of dirt, threw my head back and cried out, “Why?? Why couldn’t you just leave?” No I didn’t. I celebrated with champagne.
A month passed and the pool was free of aquatic formicidae . Unfortunately the ants have been replaced with other things like sand, leaves and other debris but one thing at time. I’ve been able to enjoy the pool now that the water temperature won’t freeze off vital parts of my anatomy. Recently, however, I’ve noticed that the instances of ant suicide have been steadily increasing again. These guys just don’t get the hint. Maybe I should get an anteater instead of a dog...
Ich kann Beatbox besser als Sie ...
