Camponotus

When I first moved into my apartment, within about a month I developed an ant problem. It was those chunky big black ones (see left), the carpenter ants. Now, I try to be nice to buggy little things. But those big guys really freak me out.

Anyway, they were pretty much hanging out in my bathroom. I would go in and see 1 running from under the radiator towards the tub, and then in a day I’d see 2 more doing the same. So these were apparently the scouts. And I let them go, and would freak out and scream a little (I mean, look at those tiny little waists and flapping antennae), but I let them live.

This was going on a for a bit, and then one Sunday morning I got up and went to take a shower. I got all ready, opened the curtain...and saw TENS of ants!
(I don’t want to exaggerate, so although HUNDREDS or MILLIONS would have been a lot more impressive here, it was really just tens. Maybe about 50 total.)
But 50 of those big black ants is a lot, especially when you are naked and about to step into a tub with them. There were about 5 at the bottom of the tub, and maybe 10 just crawling on the walls. And the rest of them were smashing themselves down underneath and next to my shampoo bottle, as though it was their little ant church where they were congregating on this lovely summer Sunday. Because I don’t use sugar shampoo, I’m not sure exactly what the draw was. But ewwww. So I was screaming and jumping around, and grabbed a towel to cover myself (because I didn’t want their ant eyes to see me exposed). I ended up turning the shower head on them, and then watched them all just wash away down the drain, their creepy bodies and antennae swirling around in the tub. (The image of it is still burned into my brain; it was like a massacre, all by my hand.)

I decide that day that I’d rather just not shower, and go on with my life. The next day I shower, and when I look over, I see an ant that jammed itself up between the clear shower curtain and the decorative outside one. It was just sitting there, not moving, not doing anything. I think it was judging me. Silently. Effectively.

I still live with the guilt of that massacre today. Enough that I think about it and write down the experience 4 years later. I am haunted. And I am the person that was crying uncontrollably in “Honey, I shrunk the Kids!” because of that scene where their little anty friend defends them against the scorpion. Wait, I must be remembering wrong... Didn’t they live in the Northeast? Who knows.