Mass Murder of Ants

Since we have moved to the apartment behind our old apartment we have been invaded by ants. Now ants were always a problem, Sabine used to complain about them in her spotless kitchen! We have the same problem, although our kitchen is not always spotless but, once the lights go out, the ants take over, its gross, but there's not much that can be done.

This time the Leaf-cutter ants attacked my bougainvilleas. It went from a flowering, green leafy plant to a bunch of leafless branches in what seemed like a day or two! We can always see ants walking in their little line, carrying bits of leaves, hard at work. It never really bothered me that much until they took all the leaves of my plant! So I went to the hardware store and got this poison. The guy told me to sprinkle it in their path and they will pick it up and bring it back to the nest (or whatever the place ants live is called) and die. It seemed easy enough. Ivan and I went outside and found the line of ants and sprinkled the little green disks along their path.

We watched as they started picking them up and carrying them along their way back home. I was amazed that it worked so fast, the ants immediately picked them up, but then I started feeling guilty. I was tricking them and they were carrying off poison that would kill them all! I have never liked killing living things. Ask my dad who I would call up into my room when there was a spider, but then ask him to capture it and bring it outside instead of killing it. I would often do that myself, if I was brave enough. Although here the insects are sometimes a little too big and scary to do this and Ivan doesn't go for capturing it and putting it outside. So I have had to get used to the killing of little and big insect alike. And just to be clear, I think cockroaches are the only thing I don't care about killing. I cant decide if they are more gross dead or alive, I certainly dont like killing them because of their gooey insides and but I have no remorse for them when they are gone.

I was surprised that Ivan was saddened by our massive ant murder as well. At first I thought he was just making fun of me, but then he suggested even cleaning up the poison we had left out and said that we were messing with the circle of life. It is true. When we went outside tonight we only saw one ant on the ant road, poor thing doesnt know where all his friends went. I dont know, maybe I have watched too many of those movies, "Antz" or "A Bug's Life", but both Ivan and I were feeling pretty bad about the whole thing.