Battle Plans
There’s a war going on. Over the past year, we’ve been subjugated to a never-ending, multi-pronged, malicious attack on our most treasured sites. I cannot open my eyes without seeing a reminder of my bitter enemy’s path of destruction, and despite the fact that our response has been merciless and forceful, I still go to bed at night with an uneasy feeling.
Though you may not think so, you know our enemy well. A member of the Formicidae Family…that’s right, I’m talking about ANTS.
We’ve been plagued by the nasty critters since we moved into our house. I’ve tried sprays, mass squishings, vinegar – even the vacuum cleaner, but still, they keep on coming.
I knew I needed to get some extra help. Random attacks clearly were not working. I needed to understand my enemy -- get inside their little black heads.
I did a multi-criteria Google search on ant colonies and their cultures’ similarities to post-medieval battle tactics of dominant military powers. I know, nerdy. What I learned was that ants behave like many other large colonized beings. They act in both a defensive and offensive manner, and their offensive maneuvers are slow and methodical, utilizing an army of drone-like soldiers with very specific duties. In my case, these soldiers needed to feed and find shelter. I learned that my enemy was probably somewhere in my house, probably in the wall, and that like all colonies, they needed a supply line from their home base, where a Queen was popping out soldiers at an unGodly rate – and so on, and so on.
I took a lesson from the Huns and decided that what I needed to do was decapitate my enemy at the source, thus causing the rest of the army to fall apart. Destroy the enemy in my walls, but destroy the leaders located somewhere in my, or my neighbors, yard. But how?
My anything-but-wicked stepmother came up with the answer: Terro. Liquid Bait. You see, you put a piece of cardboard with a drop or two of this stuff near their tracks, and they come around it like wildlife around a savannah waterhole. They drink the stuff, regurgitate it to their friends, and slowly get it back to the Queens in their respective nests. After a certain amount of time, like a slow poison, they all go bye-bye.
Rule number one of warfare: Patience
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Rule number one of battle planning: Patience.
Though you may not think so, you know our enemy well. A member of the Formicidae Family…that’s right, I’m talking about ANTS.
We’ve been plagued by the nasty critters since we moved into our house. I’ve tried sprays, mass squishings, vinegar – even the vacuum cleaner, but still, they keep on coming.
I knew I needed to get some extra help. Random attacks clearly were not working. I needed to understand my enemy -- get inside their little black heads.
I did a multi-criteria Google search on ant colonies and their cultures’ similarities to post-medieval battle tactics of dominant military powers. I know, nerdy. What I learned was that ants behave like many other large colonized beings. They act in both a defensive and offensive manner, and their offensive maneuvers are slow and methodical, utilizing an army of drone-like soldiers with very specific duties. In my case, these soldiers needed to feed and find shelter. I learned that my enemy was probably somewhere in my house, probably in the wall, and that like all colonies, they needed a supply line from their home base, where a Queen was popping out soldiers at an unGodly rate – and so on, and so on.
I took a lesson from the Huns and decided that what I needed to do was decapitate my enemy at the source, thus causing the rest of the army to fall apart. Destroy the enemy in my walls, but destroy the leaders located somewhere in my, or my neighbors, yard. But how?
My anything-but-wicked stepmother came up with the answer: Terro. Liquid Bait. You see, you put a piece of cardboard with a drop or two of this stuff near their tracks, and they come around it like wildlife around a savannah waterhole. They drink the stuff, regurgitate it to their friends, and slowly get it back to the Queens in their respective nests. After a certain amount of time, like a slow poison, they all go bye-bye.
Rule number one of warfare: Patience
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Rule number one of battle planning: Patience.
posted by Lou at 11:59 PM
1 Comments:
Patience has paid off -- the ants are disappearing. Where are they going? Who cares? I realize this may sound insensitive, but this house is barely big enough for the three of us, let alone the 8 million of them.
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