Them!

(Courtesy:  weeklyreader.com)

It's not that Suellen and I have to share our shower with ants that bugs me the most, really.

It's more of a social issue.  The ants, I've concluded, are taking more showers than I am.  That makes me look bad, you little jerks.  (Talking to the ants, not you.)

I don't care if they did evolve from wasp-like ancestors (still talking ants, not you) and have been around somewhere between 110 and 130 million years.  The ants can just take their bathy baths outside somewhere.

OK, full disclosure:  I was pretty freaked out by the cheesy sci-fi/horror movie "Them!" when I was a kid not yet 10 in the mid '50s.   Nuked in early atomic tests, giant mutated ants roamed the New Mexico desert looking not for someplace to shower, oddly enough, but for humans to snack on. 

Almost everything I know, which isn't much, I learned by watching movies.  Case in point:  Don't go anywhere near the ocean ("Jaws"); Don't look in the attic ("Don't Look in the Attic"); Don't try to pet a skunk.

Actually, I learned that one on my own.  That's another (grisly) story.

Obviously, ants have no decency and show no mercy.  After all, early on in "Them!" they did devour gentle old storekeeper Gramps Johnson.

But could we get back to my shower, please?  (Speaking figuratively; still not talking about you personally.)

We can't put ant traps in the shower, where they appear to be coming in, for sanitary reasons.  So we've placed ant traps on the floor just outside the shower door.

Many of them do die.  Actually, it's a clean death.  They tramp through the shower, stop off for a little ant trap snack, "Yum!" and fall over dead.

Perhaps taking a hint from what they're read on a shampoo bottle on the way in, this process takes place, then repeats.  Takes place, then repeats.

About a billion times!

I thought we were gaining on the determined little invaders.  I mean, how many of them can there be?  Now I learn through my usual careful research (I Googled) that ants are attracted to the smell of their own dead. 

Them!  Those sick bas*#$@*!

 Apparently it's some sort of "no ant left behind" military deal.

If they must go military on us, I would much prefer a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.

That way maybe I could shower in peace.

Occasionally.