Last night when I mentioned my little ant problem, I thought I was going to be able to link to last year's drama. Turns out, that post is on the other (super-secret and super-scary) blog. So, let me just tell you about last year's ant drama.

We get invaded every year. It's been going on for as long as we have lived in Pittsburgh (six years?). So, there was no shock when I started spotting a couple around the joint. As usual, there were a few in the kitchen trying to steal the Bulldog food (they don't touch the Iams, just the extra-expensive Bully food--I don't want to know why). I practiced a few little Earth/pet/baby friendly removal methods on their butts, and away they went.

Upstairs, however, was a different story. Those ants were big. Those ants were malicious. Those ants LAUGHED at my non-chemical attempts to shoo them away. I couldn't figure out where they were coming from, I couldn't figure out what they were looking for, and I couldn't figure out why the hell they were in our house in the first place. All I knew was that they were big (as in one could not fit its whole self on a key on your keyboard--seriously), they were ugly, and I wanted them out.

After I exhausted every non-chemical remedy known to man, I decided to go for something a little bit more powerful. I spent hours scouring shelves at Home Depot, trying to find a product that claimed to be kind-ish to kids and pets. I finally found one. It was some sort of powder that claimed to kill on contact and that you just had to sort of squirt into crevices wherever you saw ants.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that when you have ants in your house, they are probably spending their free time wherever you have pipes. They can't survive without water, so if you strike at their water source, you'll get them. That meant if I wanted to kick some serious ant booty upstairs, I needed to squirt my powder gunk in the wall between Alexis' room and the bathroom. So I unscrewed a electrical outlet cover and squirted away, chuckling to myself as I imagined all those little creepy crawlies withering away in misery.

Not so much.

The "alleged" ant killer was more like ant REPELLENT. And HELLO! there were not just a couple of ants living in the wall, but LITERALLY THOUSANDS. How do I know this? Because they came pouring out of the wall. POURING.

Thousands of carpenter ants.

Walking around my hallway.

Covered in alleged ant killing white powder.

At first I figured it was just going to take a minute to take affect. So I stood around, dodging ants and thanking all sorts of deities that no animals or a certain troublemaker had decided to come upstairs.

And I waited.

And I waited.

OK, not really. I did absolutely no waiting, I just spun around in circles spraying the alleged ant killing powder on every single ant in my vicinity. Until I ran out of powder. Then I figured I would vacuum up the thousands of ants that were marching all over our upstairs, even if they were still alive. Two hours later, our see-thru canister vacuum was full of creepy crawlies and looked like it was alive.

As I am occasionally really stupid and very naive, I still figured the alleged ant killing powder would kick in.

Not so much.

Getting rid of the canister full of still living ants covered in alleged ant killing powder? Tons of fun, let me tell you. I've never had such a good time never, ever, ever.

At that point I went a wee bit crazy (OK, crazier). I ran to the store and bought the Serious S%*t, guaranteed (by an exterminator, no less) to kill the suckers. I'll tell you, Sevin dust did work, but I still get eeked out when I think about all the other stuff it can kill.

No matter. This year I ain't screwing around. The ants will go marching two by two all the way to ant hell. Because seriously? If I find them crawling around on the floor next to this one? I will go all Chuck Norris on their asses.