Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Recipe: Not for the Faint of Heart
Sometimes, the simplest ingredients make for the best results.
Here's a very simple recipe that I'm trying for the third time in the last couple of months.
Ingredients:
- Water. Lots and lots of water.
Directions:
- Pour water into pots, or fill an electric kettle. Or two.
- Wait for the water to boil, while thinking to yourself "Ah, I should have used warm tap water to make it faster!".
- Bring water to a boil - better to have several pots/kettles, so they can boil in parallel- you'll need it soon!
- Turn burner to maximum temperature.
- Carefully carry pot with boiling water to the backyard.
- Pour water on the highway of swarming ants that are walking along the rim of the cement under cover of the night.
- Concentrate first on those carrying big white eggs, those with wings (queens to be) and those that are bigger (the fat-ass VIPs of the colony who came out of the nest to give emergency orders).
- Return to kitchen.
- Refill pot (this time with warm tap water!), put on burner.
- Take next pot outside. You know what to do.
- Repeat forever - or until you are exhausted.
- Drive away any remorseful thoughts of barbarism.
- Ignore the itchy feeling you suddenly get all over your body. This is psychosomatic. ,
- Hope that ants do not hold grudge. They know where you live.
For a special treat, if you see a veeeeeeeeeery big and long ant with a lot of ants trying to lead her somewhere safe - go for it! it may very well be the queen. Don't forget to courteously bow before sending her to the queens' heaven. She is, after all, royalty.
It's 2am now, and I am after 4 rounds of the above.
Let's see what tomorrow brings.
Good night.
Labels: Damn Technology, Nature, Scary, This Old House, WTF?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
A Thousand Words - And Then Some #19
Sometimes even I find myself putting down the camera. Hard times call for sacrificing documentary photography in order to grab weapons of mass destruction.
In short:
One ant on our bedroom ceiling. Rest her soul. During this discovery, I was talkin' on the phone to LimaB, who had a field day on me getting freaked about it.
Apparently, my gut feeling was correct. It always is.
Went out to the garage to fetch something from the drier - - -
- - - and a small section of the floor was practically moving. Lo and behold: a trail of ants from underneath a shelf in the garage was trekking all the way to the other end, up the garage sink leg and upwards along the wall. Some of them were very big and different in shape, which means it was a popular venue to which the VIPs of the nest also came, black-tie, valet parking and all (not sure it was the queen, though). They all seemed to really like Miracle Grow, which made me ponder - but I did not stop to have a chat about their queer taste. I prefered to put them all in the RIP state of being.
Investigating where they may come from was in vain. Outside, the sky was blue and the birds were chirping and the world looked innocent and totally ant-less.
Only then I saw some of those critters rushing out of our cactus planter.
"It's been a while since I've last watered the cacti", I thought, and poured a glass of water into one of them - - -
<--------- - - - - - - and that was the immediate result.
WHOA!!!
Swarming is an understatement.
A MAJOR understatement.
Y'see, this plant is a light green cactus. See the delightful blossoms on top of its finger-like thingies?
These are about seven thousand sixty nine billion three hundred seventy two million four thousands five hundred and sixty three ants.
Could be sixty four. It was hard to tell - they were moving fast! What am I, Rain Man?
By all means, click on the photo to see it larger and up close while you're sitting at your safe ant-less house. (not a bad macro photo for someone in an acute shock, eh?)
Not sure if that is the source, but The JohnnyB is going on a quest for that Combat thingy that CherkyB recommended.
So . . . anyone knows a pet store that's carrying ant eaters?
.
previous 1000 Words... ...next 1000 words
Labels: Nature, Scary, This Old House, WTF?
Monday, February 04, 2008
Got Ants?
It's this time of year again.
The season opened a couple of weeks ago, when I noticed I was not alone in the shower, but rather exposed to the scrutinizing gazes of those creepy crawlers. A line of them, walking along the shower wall and onto the tiles, looking for - well, not quite sure what. It's a shower, for heaven's sake! No food here, little idiots! So I washed them down and cleaned around with some orange oil cleaner to wipe away their tracks.
Sure enough, they came back. Only this time, onto the bathroom countertop. At least they had a solid reason this time, as The JohnnyB, in a brilliant move, had left the NyQuil bottle open... What a wonderful sight for sore eyes, to wake up in the morning and freeze in front of a crawling surface, eh? Some of them were checking out my face cream, a couple others decided to adopt my contact lenses case as their very own Olympic swimming pool, and a bunch of teenage ants dipped their antennas in my leave-in conditioner. I didn't care about that as much as I was furious at the ones that used my Chanel perfume. What a %#@# liberty! The majority of that delegation went for the NyQuil, and already had this dosed look in their eyes, heavy eyelids and all. Well, one thing's for sure: they will never cough again. Not only due to the efficiency of the syrup, but mostly because they have met their sudden demise right there and then. I'm not a morning person.A couple of evenings later, we were having dinner. Sitting in front of the TV, listening to the falling rain, eating the very nice chicken in tarragon-mustard cream sauce (yup, made by yours truly), the furnace humming its cozy song - I reached out for my bottle of juice, took a sip, and - - - hey, an ant on my plate? Ah well, I nonchalantly kicked it out, trying to keep my cool (as The JohnnyB was watching), and took another sip from the bottle - - - um, I mean, I was just about to, when I saw it was, like, kinda, moving?? Well, so much for being nonchalant. Jumped off the chair, and ran to the sink to wash the ants off the bottle. The JohnnyB was quick to follow, his bottle also adorned with a lively crown of ants. Interesting coincidence? A quick look in the garage revealed that the top shelf, where we keep the juice bottles, was swarming with those little guys. Have you seen Indiana Jones? You get the picture. I know, I know - ants are small, they have an admirable colony life with community centers and low-rate classes for their elderly, and true, they are not revolting as other creatures (see under cockroaches). BUT - they do give me the creeps and drive me nuts with their persistency. And it's not only me - they almost drove The JohnnyB to becoming a Republican! This time, they had a drum & bugle corps that was marching ahead, triumphantly leading the troops up, up, up towards the roof.
Yet another massacre, followed by the orange cleaner.
So the morning after, The JohnnyB bravely went outside to look for the source. 'round the house he walked, using his bionic eyes (well, he had Lasik) to find trails or at least scouts. The little dirty bustards, on mobilization orders, were busy attacking the house, building Trojan horses, trying to get in through every nook and crevice, with helmets and bayoneted guns, climbing their way to the roof!
5 bottles of Terro Outdoor spray. The guys at OSH are really starting to like us!We had two quiet days, each side rearranging its forces. Then, they came through the garage sink, practically from nowhere, made their way to the shelf above the washing machine and allured me into playing hide and seek with them amongst the many garage towels... quite a deadly game, as they quickly discovered.
"I swear they come through the pipes", I told The JohnnyB when he came home from work, "EmeritiL also has ants in her shower, and she said they keep coming through the pipes!".
But a man like The JohnnyB will not listen to frivolous women. Nope. He needs proof. And the proof is in the pudding. And so are the ants.
He followed them as if he were Guy Noir, Private Eye. Tracing their little footprints, shining a flashlight into their deceiving eyes, questioning their relatives and friends to see where they might be coming from. He even went as far as torturing some, who - I've got to hand it to them - preferred to commit suicide rather than tell on their colony.
Reverting to technology, he used some foam-spray thingy to seal around the pipes, just in case.
Sure enough, they popped up for a visit in the shower. Again. Just to say hi, and see if perhaps we wouldn't catch them. Y'know, what annoys me the most is the smug expression on their little faces when they look me in the eye, signaling to me you-might-be-bigger-but-we-are-more-stubborn. Oh yeah? well, I have the spray bottle, you little freaks!
The last report is from today. The rain kept falling, and we decided to start clearing the garage from the boxes that remained from our flooring adventure (yup, we haven't unpacked everything yet. We're busy. Fighting ants).
I sat on the doorstep to put my shoes on, when I noticed the floor is moving - - - well, hello again! A line of ants, walking from nowhere towards where-the-hell! The JohnnyB knelt on his knees (the way he never did when he proposed to me), and started to follow them. They couldn't care less, and kept their Sunday stroll underneath the shelves, towards the furnace and into an alleged crevice in the wall that led out of the house. Or maybe back into the house. One of them tipped his hat towards us. You could tell it came from a good nest.
The JohnnyB went on a spraying spree inside the furnace, where they were heading. As a result, we had to freeze for hours until it was safe again to turn the heat on (while the combination of fumes and fire would have made a great blog post, we chose to skip the adventure). So now we get the odor of the spray from the heating vents. Joy!Where are they heading next?
I don't know.
It's starting to feel like a movie from the mystery-horror genre. They are leading us in circles, you see. Trying to drive us crazy before they carry out their vicious plan. Oh yes, they have a plan! Today I saw, with my own eyes, a suspicious-looking ant with a long tan coat and bad breath, passing a piece of paper to another ant. The latter managed to swallow the note just before I could tear it out of its tiny jaws.
Any day now, they'll be moving Fred.
Labels: Scary, This Old House, WTF?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Roaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!!!
We went to see the movie "I Am Legend" tonight.
I have to disclaim: I am not a horror movies type of gal, and never been a fan of this genre. I usually find them boring and silly, sometimes even funny, as they are so totally out of proportions. Zombies, monsters, aliens, demons - I mean, c'mon!
I do highly appreciate psychological thrillers, as those can truly scare the hell out of me.
But - it was The JohnnyB's birthday, and I screwed up with one of the gifts I got for him (subscription to a magazine, that, um... he already is subscribed to... I don't want to talk about it!). And, he's been wanting to go to this movie for ages.
Plus, in the last couple of weeks, I saw a movie with Will Smith, which has left in awe of his acting skills. Have you watched "The Pursuit of Happyness"? Well, the kid who played the reckless Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has grown to a top-notch actor.
So we went.I did not come out of it a groupie of horror movies, but Will Smith played his role incredibly.
Since we caught this movie only now, we saw it in an old quirky cinema, that sold stale popcorn. The place smelled of pee, and by the look of the chairs, those responsible for this odor did not bother to go to the restroom to leave their mark. And, to top it all, as one of the characters was saying the finishing sentence of the movie, the end of that very last sentence was cut in the middle (I kid you not!) and the lights went back on, leaving us no chance of seeing the cast or the director. I'm pretty sure won't be going to that theatre ever again, but now I am soooooooooooooooo glad we went to see it there, as the screen was small... I wouldn't want to watch this one on a full screen. Hey, in some places, it played in iMAX!!!
The movie is bursting with nocturnal zombies all over the place. And yes, it was scary. Not the constant roaring and the glaring eyes of those creatures, as much as the impact of the terrible silence that pulls you into the reality of the movie.
Right as we were going out of the movie theatre, I heard someone calling my name - and it was webbieL from our watercolor club. I was still overwhelmed by the movie, so I guess I acted very weird (The JohnnyB states I was looking around very nervously). I was still in that freaked-out state as we drove back home in the dark empty streets, wondering when will the first zombie stick his unpigmented face in the window and roar at us with sharpened teeth.
When we got home, The JohnnyB was so thoroughly amused by my reaction that he took me by the hand to check that all the closets are safe and the house is zombie-free.
OK, OK - laugh all you want. But - - - - now The JohnnyB is feeling sick... he even took Airborne.
Coincidence??
I dunno.
One thing's for sure: I'm gonna check his hair, eyes and gums in the morning. You don't mess with the plague.
Labels: Damn Technology, Movies, Scary
