Back with the ants. Life seems to be involving them in one way or another as each day passes. I guess we gotta share this place.
One dinner time, as Amy was preparing some fabulous dish that I forget now as it’s not really relevant to this story, she told me to serve myself and heat up some rice from the fridge. I grabbed the container and a plate and went to the table, plied the lid off and saw little black dots on the rice which looked like it may have been mould. I decided to wait. In Amy’s parent’s house, copious amounts of rice are made daily, whether it’s used or not, some kept out, some in the fridge and a fresh lot in the rice cooker.
I called out to Amy and said there was ‘black stuff’ in the rice. She asked if it was mould, and I said maybe or maybe ant eggs. She came to have a look and declared it was just tiny ants. That’s ok then. I picked around the black bits as best I could. Amy estimates she would have probably eaten well over 10,000 ants by accident in her lifetime.
The following night Amy’s dad offered me a dish of red ant eggs with veggies to which I declined. I also spied the tub of rice from the fridge and noticed that one of the tiny ants in there was still moving. I bet those things can live all the way through your body.
The ants are everywhere in Amy’s parent’s house, anywhere where some form of food can be found, though not sure what’s in the bathroom that entices them, maybe flecks of toothpaste and dead skin. I’m wondering how we can keep them out of our house.
Which leads me to the second ant story. As I was watering the garden I’ve been pulling out weeds, loosening the ground with water so I can pull up as much of the roots as possible. I find this strangely satisfying. I’ve been careful to look out for snakes and other little beasties and then I came across an ant’s nest, less than ten feet from our kitchen.
The ants were possibly disturbed by my watering but were running around in a bit of a tizzy, some of the carrying stuff that I couldn’t quite make out. I went and told Amy about the nest and she didn’t think much of it at the time saying if we need to we can get rid of them with ‘chemicals’.
So I went back to watering and weeding, noticing that the ant action had died down mostly, with just a few scattered wanderers scurrying about. That was when I felt an almighty sting on my finger as I was pulling up a weed. I let go of the weed and pulled up my hand to find one of these little bastards attached to my finger. I quickly brushed it off as the pain intensified and I wondered if I needed to go to the hospital or something serious like that.
I pissed and moaned for a bit and carried on watering and after a while, the pain subsided. It did make me think though that if a bunch of these ants had decided to climb up inside my shirt or shoes, that would be something a little more worrying and potentially dangerous.
Later, Amy saw a picture I took of the ants and proclaimed ‘Oh those ones are nasty – we need to get rid of them’. We’re looking for ‘chemicals’ now.
PS – the feature picture isn’t connected to this post. It was taken when I managed to duck out from Amy’s parent’s house on my pushbike. I enjoy just riding around the small sois (streets) nearby and getting lost before finding my way again.
12th Mar 2023 – How cautious I was at the time, still not knowing what was dangerous or not. Now, ants and lizards, in and around the house, are just normal. We never did get any chemicals.
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