The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah!

Looking back at some of the silly songs we sang as children, I can’t believe I didn’t have more nightmares! The mere thought of ants marching across the room makes me feel like they’re crawling all over my body! And if said ants happen to be fire ants…

I recently discovered that the little red darlings had invaded the room where I was feeding the kittens. After hastily clearing out all food and vacuuming the room thoroughly, I entered once more to put a grits-laced bowl of cat food down before rushing out and spraying the doorway with peppermint oil diluted in water. I have not entered the room since. In fact, I had my adopted son check the food bowl and ant trail for me while I stood outside the door, cringing and twitching like I was being crawled on. It was only in the last few days that I didn’t have that eerie sensation of things biting me from ankle to neck. As no suspicious welts appeared, I guess I’m safe…for now.

At some point, I need to re-enter the room and see if the solution I found on the internet for a pet friendly elimination of the pests was effective. But wimp that I am, I have yet to breach the doorway, and the longer I wait, the larger those ants loom until, if I don’t face it down soon, I will have myself convinced that the ants have created a giant, Transformer of an ant out of millions of their tiny bodies!

Now, I am not usually prone to squeamishness. I am comfortable with snakes, lizards and various members of the rodent family. But when faced with something equipped with more than four legs, that can wiggle and crawl into very tiny places, I become a wriggling mass of jello. I don’t know why bugs bug me this way. I certainly wasn’t very frightened as a child. (which was a good thing as my cat, Snowy, loved to bring me presents in the middle of the night. As the screen kept falling off of my bedroom window and we slept with it open in the summer, she murdered all manner of crawly things on the foot of my bed, with little more than an “Ewww, Gross!” from me.) I am embarrassed to admit that I am that girl who would like to have a big, strong man to kill the bugs for me!

Sadly, the only man who’s been around here with any regularity is my son-in-law who is more afraid of spiders and such than me!

Sometime in the next couple of days, I really need to don my battle gear and check the results of the grits method of ant disposal to see if it was effective. I only hope that it was so I don’t spend another couple of weeks, certain that I have been attacked by a herd of teeny, tiny fire ants, bent on leaving little pockets of their poison all over my unprotected body! This, my friends, is the stuff from which nightmares are made! I feel a horror story coming on! I only hope I don’t scare myself too much in the writing!

My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful for all of my qualities, even the embarrassing ones.
2. I am grateful that my imagination runs away from me, even when I scare the crap out of myself.
3. I am grateful for a very productive week.
4. I am grateful for new opportunities and ideas.
5. I am grateful for abundance: humor, imagination, love, joy, dancing, wisdom, harmony, peace and prosperity.

Namaste