Last Wednesday I drove down to SLO, as previously detailed. I wasn’t nervous or anything, but I was consciously trying to get a good night’s sleep before that, just so I wouldn’t be too tired for the drive, nor feel I had to catch up on sleep in time for the career fair the next day (in the case that we had a late night, the night before, for whatever reason).
It appears that this information was leaked to the ants. The mole has not been discovered as yet. With this intel, the ants decided to advanced their plans for world domination and launch a cowardly surprised attack at somewhen around 5am, Wednesday the 16th of January, 2008… a date, that shall live, in infamy…
The apparent objective of this attack was to establish a beachhead for their entire north-American assault… on my pillow. Which my head was also coincidentally upon at the time, as is the fashion these days when sleeping. Over the last few weeks I’d become fairly desensitised to the ants biting me in my sleep – sometimes it’d wake me up, I’d squish the little buggers responsible, flick them away, and go back to sleep. However, this particular morning, the attacks seemed relentless – I couldn’t count the number of ants I squished in this dreamstate… eventually, it crawled into my mind that something was up – I wasn’t even getting back to unconsciousness anymore before the next ant attacked.
And so it was that I checked my neck and shoulders, and found numerous ants scouting about. And when I propped myself up and looked up, at the wall above my bed, I then noticed it was inexplicably occupied by several hundred ants. I shortly realised said ants were also similarly amassed on my pillow and bed, thus explaining the recent skirmishes.
I don’t like being woken up at 6am. Or whatever time it was. This is not a normal time for people to be waking up. I’m not a morning person. Heck, some days I’m not an early-afternoon person… as hard as I’ve tried to co-exist with my [previously] benevolent ant overlords, and avoid killing them unnecessarily, this was the final straw. They invaded my room, their corpses accumulated disturbingly in my bathroom (the tiles there actually kill them… I don’t know how, but it looks extremely painful :! )… they even tried to steal my chocolate… all these things I tolerated through some heroic summoning of mercy. But attacking my face at 6am is not on.
So, I crushed every single one I could find. And brushed their mangled bodies off the wall. And started to get my stuff together for the day, given I wasn’t about to go back to that bed. Within ten minutes they’d reinforced, and I repeated my retaliation. Clearly there was no stopping them with melee weapons.
Their fatal strategic mistake, however, was in adopting a clearly defined route to the battlefield from their entry point – as it turns out, a completely random position midishway along the north wall. I would never have discovered this entrance otherwise. But now I knew… and it was time to stockpile arms..
So, after packing for SLO, I went off for a haircut – can’t go to war without looking clean and stylish – and then to the supermarket for just one thing – a can of Raid. Huzzah!
When I returned the ants had again reinforced in even greater numbers than before, which only gave me even more perverse glee as I annihilated them ruthlessly… that Raid works a treat, I’ll tell ya… I practically painted the head of my bed and the surrounding wall. I also sniped any other of the bastards I could find wandering elsewhere in my room. And if the Raid itself didn’t kill them at the breach, they would have drowned..
And then I went to work, leaving the Raid sitting on my speaker, beside the bed, as a massive, ominous monolith, a warning to any survivors still in hiding, to scurry their little arses the hell out of there before I got home from SLO.
It seems they mostly heeded my warning… I’ve since seen a couple of the buggers about my room and bathroom… and, the first night I was back I was just dozing off to sleep when one lone ant – presumably the hard-arse, cold but heroically charismatic General – took one last stab at my ankle. He was given no quarter.
It was a thorough defeat for the ant invaders… and it appears to have broken the back of their invasion – I fully expect them to begin a full retreat out of California by week’s end. At least, they’d better..
