Friday, November 19, 2004
it's just me against the ants
Last night I went to refill Bailey's food. This was a preemptive strike on my part. He still had food, but not much. If his food bowl ever gets low enough that you can see the bottom of the bowl, Bailey starts getting very testy. And the way he shows his testiness is by meowing constantly until the situation is remedied. Apparently Bailey is under the impression that cat food bowls have no bottom, and when he is reminded that cat food bowls actually do have bottoms, it is very upsetting to him. Thus, the meowing.
It was kind of late, maybe 12:30, but I had not been asleep yet, and I am sure I was not dreaming. Also, I didn't take any kind of drugs or alcohol. It's not really my thing. But how else could I explain the hallucination? You see, Bailey's food was...moving.
When I opened the bag to pour out Bailey's food, I found that there were the usual bits of Purina goodness. Cat food triangles, cat food squares, cat food tetrahedrons, but what's this? Purina is now including ant-shaped cat food bits. And they move? After examining this for several minutes, I realized that this was not cat food at all. It was the real thing. Real ants!
Perhaps there are those of you who are only familiar with ants from the movie Antz. Therefore, you might be under the impression that ants are creepy, disturbing, neurotic, talking, alien things. Well, that's only half the story. They also bite and are extremely hard to get out of cat food.
I figured that I now had two missions: 1) get enough food in Bailey's bowl that he would not meow all night long, and 2) inflict ant Armageddon on any ants within Raid-spraying distance.
Goal number 1 was about as difficult as it sounds. Going through individual pieces of cat food, separating delicious cat food from disgusting insects, takes some serious concentration, and is actually rather time consuming. I had to pick through every single piece of cat food until I got enough to line the bottom of the bowl, thus creating the illusion that the bowl is bottomless.
But now for Goal number 2, the fun part: ant vengeance. I found that Raid ant spray is really rather effective when sprayed directly on an ant. The ant death is almost instantaneous. So when you have a swarm of ants busily scurrying around on your floor, one spraying motion is true hell for the unfortunate ants who made it out of the bag. But the real nightmare was reserved for the ants left in the bag. Their fate was not so pleasant. I sprayed about half the can of Raid into the bag, then closed the cat food bag, put it into a Target bag, and tied everything up, leaving the ants to suffocate. Hey, don't mess with my cat food.
At one point, one of the ants managed to get in a cheap shot and bit me on the toe. And it still itches. Ant war is not without its casualties.
¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/19/2004
It was kind of late, maybe 12:30, but I had not been asleep yet, and I am sure I was not dreaming. Also, I didn't take any kind of drugs or alcohol. It's not really my thing. But how else could I explain the hallucination? You see, Bailey's food was...moving.
When I opened the bag to pour out Bailey's food, I found that there were the usual bits of Purina goodness. Cat food triangles, cat food squares, cat food tetrahedrons, but what's this? Purina is now including ant-shaped cat food bits. And they move? After examining this for several minutes, I realized that this was not cat food at all. It was the real thing. Real ants!
Perhaps there are those of you who are only familiar with ants from the movie Antz. Therefore, you might be under the impression that ants are creepy, disturbing, neurotic, talking, alien things. Well, that's only half the story. They also bite and are extremely hard to get out of cat food.
I figured that I now had two missions: 1) get enough food in Bailey's bowl that he would not meow all night long, and 2) inflict ant Armageddon on any ants within Raid-spraying distance.
Goal number 1 was about as difficult as it sounds. Going through individual pieces of cat food, separating delicious cat food from disgusting insects, takes some serious concentration, and is actually rather time consuming. I had to pick through every single piece of cat food until I got enough to line the bottom of the bowl, thus creating the illusion that the bowl is bottomless.
But now for Goal number 2, the fun part: ant vengeance. I found that Raid ant spray is really rather effective when sprayed directly on an ant. The ant death is almost instantaneous. So when you have a swarm of ants busily scurrying around on your floor, one spraying motion is true hell for the unfortunate ants who made it out of the bag. But the real nightmare was reserved for the ants left in the bag. Their fate was not so pleasant. I sprayed about half the can of Raid into the bag, then closed the cat food bag, put it into a Target bag, and tied everything up, leaving the ants to suffocate. Hey, don't mess with my cat food.
At one point, one of the ants managed to get in a cheap shot and bit me on the toe. And it still itches. Ant war is not without its casualties.
¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/19/2004
