perhaps a decoy lamp

We have ant problems at the moment.
The coffee table is COVERED in them. They’re busy making trails to the giant bunch of (lovely) waratahs and banksia and protea Crinks gave me for my birthday (one of the birthday highlights I forgot to mention in that last maudlin, birthday sook post). Some of them have made it to the dining table where I’m marking. The ants, that is. Not the flowers. Unfortunately. I have to keep brushing them off the students’ papers. Or blow them off my laptop. Every now and then one gets under the keys. I wonder how they’re all doing in there.
Bugs freak out The Squeeze (or should that be freak The Squeeze out?). But not me – I’m from Brisbane. There are very few bugs in Melbourne. It’s cold. And it’s urban. I have almost completely lost my leap-out-of-bed-when-you-feel-something-in-there-with-you reactions. And my super-fast-removal hand flick. When we’re sitting on the couch watching Kerrie in the evenings, I just pick up my glass and tuck my feet under me while The Squeeze shrieks and tries to wipe the table clean (again). He is obsessed with Ant Rid (which I don’t even think about, ever).
It’s difficult to care about a few busy ants when you’ve slept with giant cockroaches and had to type with the lights off and the computer monitor on a low glow, with perhaps a decoy lamp on in another part of the room because you had no flyscreens.

Published by dogpossum

3 Comments

  1. Have you forgotten about the hornets that sneak in and build solid mud huts on any vaguely porous surface they can find?
    A rather pleasing trend that I’ve noticed lately re giant flying cockroaches is that if I ignore them they eventually die. I think they’d much rather live outside, but they can’t resist the shiny lights.

  3. Everyone has their William S Burroughs moment.
    No hornets here either, Galaxy. But there are so many mice living in our compose bin. I’m not sure how we can stop it, short of getting rid of our (excellent) compost bin.

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