The Ant Bully

Don't you just love how they make movies about insects and personify them so that if you were to even to think about squashing them your child looks at you like you are Cruella De Ville?

Oh! There's a spider! Where's my shoe? Nope it might be one of Charlotte's babies from Charlotte's Web.

Watch out for that bee! Be careful it might be Barry from the Bee Movie.

Look at the ants taking over our house! Where's the bug spray? Mom! It might be Z or Princess Bala from Antz of Lucas' friends from the Ant Bully.

I'm so glad my girls were at school on Friday.

With all the rain we've had this summer and the fact that I find it impossible to keep the kitchen floor swept and mopped all the time, we've had incidents with ants. When this happens I clean the attraction and then I pull out the vacuum cleaner and suck them up because technically I didn't kill the little buggers. If a few legs and body parts get sucked off in the vortex-- hey, I can't help that. But I didn't kill them myself.

Friday morning I noticed some ants by the trash can. I followed their trail and saw that they were coming in through the sliding glass door. (Their usual entrance and exit) Where's the vacuum cleaner?

The vacuum cleaner was found and the hose extender put on and I started sucking up ants at the door. I must have spent 5 minutes and they just kept coming out, 2-5 at a time. I have to admit, there is some perverse pleasure in sucking up ants. I think a psychologist could have a field day with that one but, alas, psychotherapy must wait for another day.

Ryan must be just like me though. Once he realized what I was doing he was pointing out the ants to be sucked up.

Finally I realized that I could be there all day and this was not productive use of my time -- especially with all the unread email calling my name! So I turned off the vacuum cleaner and went to find the Ant Party invitation AKA dried up strawberry. I found it under the trash can.

Yeah, I think it had been there more than 12 hours, but in my defense it was UNDER the trash can. Don't be so quick to judge! Ye without food under thou trash container can be the first to throw rotten fruit.

The offending fruit was cleaned up and I went back to the sliding door. And this was what I found:

Ewww! The title of my blog might be There's Always Room For One More but that doesn't apply to 252 ants! I was more than a bit grossed out. What to do? More vacuuming.

By this time Ryan was completely entranced. Sweet little Ryan who hasn't been brainwashed by Hollywood movies yet was completely into taking 'em out!

New play time activity, sucking up ants. He had a fantastic time with this. Emma, in the bottom left corner, wasn't sure what was going on. But analytical Ryan couldn't be content with just sucking up the ants.

Where did they go? Yes the vacuum is still on!

He followed the hose and realized that they went into the canister.

I think he would have been happy sucking up ants all day (that's my boy!) but I was beginning to worry that the vacuum cleaner would over heat. I pulled out the Windex and squirted the door and floor and soon there were no more ants.

Let's just hope Analytical Ryan doesn't figure out what drew the ants in the first place or he might be extending the invitations himself.