War Declared on Carpenter Ants

Readers may recall that I set out to last year, following our only son’s departure for college. New windows, exterior paint, replacement of rotted wood. We sacrificed a 2011 vacation to get this done, but the outside of our house now shines like a new penny.

And just when I thought I was making headway as a homeowner, here come the carpenter ants.

My husband and I were relaxing on our back deck last week - the one with all new, still-curing floorboards - and began to see huge, black ants crawling everywhere. They looked harmless, so we left them alone. But this weekend brought an increasing number of the insects, and I then found one inside, crawling along my den wall.

A search of images and sites on the Internet led me to conclude that our home is under attack from carpenter ants. And they are not at all harmless. Oh no, my friends. Far from it.

You may have heard of the 2,500-year-old Indian religion Jainism, which advocates non-violence and considers all life sacred. Orthodox followers of Jainism wear nets across their mouth and nose to prevent accidental inhalation and death of insects. While walking, they sweep the path in front of them in order to avoid killing any bugs. As I understand it, followers of Jainism believe that the soul incarnates in various living forms over time, including sub-human life forms such as birds and insects. Thus, all human and sub-human creatures have a soul and are to be treated as sacred.  

Contemplating these unique religious beliefs and practices is pretty cool. Watching insects attack my real estate investment is another matter. So as of this writing, war has been declared on all wood-destroying pests. Sacred souls or not.  

I’ll call a pest control company tomorrow. After all, we need to make sure that my invaders are actually the harmful carpenter ants. And, if confirmed, we need to find their nest and then use the insect equivalent of a nuclear blast to eradicate the enemy.

Oh, don’t fuss. I’ll use something eco-friendly.

So while the rest of you are enjoying the beach during Spring Break 2012, I’ll be crawling under my deck behind a pest control agent whom I pray spares me the view of his plumber’s crack and knows all manner of tricks for finding elusive ant nests.

Maintaining a home is a flat out vacation-robbing annoyance. Maybe I’m just delirious with spring fever, but I’m ready to move to a one-bedroom mobile home. When it begins to fall apart, I can just have someone haul it off and replace it with a newer model.  

But then I’d have to worry about tornados.

Oh well. It’s always something.