Invasion!

I sat on the toilet at work today, staring at the little speckled design painted on the linoleum floor.  The specks began to shift and roam in seemingly random directions.  I blinked and they stood still, back in their original positions.  I have the office ant colony to thank for this visual phenomenon. 

Jim, our maintenance guy, had noticed a few ants in the kitchen last week and set up a couple of traps, the kind with a clear goo inside that the little buggers get stuck in.  As of this morning, those traps had only caught one or two ants each.  But I was squishing about a dozen of the bastards on my office floor every day.  So finally, after going on a mini rampage this morning, wiping out 10 or 15 of the little twerps, I stole one of the traps from the kitchen.  I found a huddled mass of probably 20 or 30 ants under the corner of the rug below my desk, and placed the trap near them.  Then I went about my work and soon took a break for lunch.  When I came back from lunch, less than two hours after setting the trap, it had gone from clear to black. 

There had to have been 60 or 70 ants inside that one-by-three-inch trap.  Some were still alive, near the entrance, just beginning to explore this new contraption placed before them.  But most were dead, floating in the goo.  When I lifted the corner of the rug, there were yet another 40 or 50 of the little critters milling around, no doubt trying to figure out where that delicious sugary smell was coming from. 

I tossed the full trap, its black coat rippling, into the garbage can.  I knew we didn’t have any spray poison, so I grabbed some floor cleaner from under the kitchen sink and gave the remaining ants a good spritzing.  Then, while they were trapped and drowning in the liquid, I came through with a wad of paper towels and finished the job.  When I was done, there were no ants left. 

I cleaned up, took out the trash, and when I sat back down a few minutes later, a couple of ants had reappeared.  I tried to go back to work, but every few minutes I would look down and see trios or quartets of them fanning out across the floor.  I peeked under the rug again and found a new batch—maybe 20 of them—amassing near the seam at the bottom of the wall. 

I stole the second trap from the kitchen.  It had a mere two dead ants in it.  Throughout the rest of the afternoon, I kept an eye on the trap as it filled up.  The ants seemed to approach its entrance, peer in at the growing crowd inside, and say to each other, “Damn. Must be a party. Smells like they’ve got some sweet grub too. You wanna check it out?”  “Yeah, dude. Looks pretty fun.  I need a break, the queen’s really been crackin’ the whip lately. Check out all these guys, passed out near the door! This must be one helluva party! Woo!”  Then, dead.

Still, not every ant could be lured in.  Every 30 minutes or so, until quitting time, I went around squishing 8 or 10 little guys who happened to be scattered across the floor, roaming aimlessly.  But wherever I would kill one, another would always seem to take its place just a few minutes later.  By the time I left, their numbers appeared to be dwindling, but they weren't gone completely.  And now the ants have the office to themselves for the weekend, with the freedom to wander or join the party.