Tag Archives: ants

Go Into the Weeds! Rid Us of the Ants!

Into the Weeds with Stanko & Tibor


Emerging Insurgents in the Weeds

Having returned home from work, I passed the tiny, patchy patch of grass and other weeds that co-habitate in front of my place of residence like filthy hippies after a bong hit. Laying about, intertwined and generally useless.  And what was circulating among those invasive weeds? Even filthier six-legged insurgents keen on crawling into my house to search for food that I, or more likely, my filth-generating children, undoubtedly left behind in various nooks and crannies. Ants. Big, small, black, dark brown, far too numerous to count and some were so large they even made a squishy noise when I crushed them.

No matter what I try to keep the garden free of ants, those semi-sentient drones keep coming back and always find ways into our house to eat the scraps of food we have dropped all over the kitchen since we foolishly agreed to host for my many greedy,  usurpatious relatives. That I love, of course.

Dumb But Multitudinous

I cannot understand how, over the eons and millennia of evolution,  that neither the ants nor the weeds have gotten any smarter. You crush them, rip them out, spray them, poison them, curse them while shaking your fist — they don’t learn their lesson. Actually, it’s probably a good thing that the ants haven’t really become any smarter because I think they would have found a way to take their revenge on me for having smooshed so many of their kind over my life. I could well imagine some A-student and Mensa society ants huddling together in a hive, with ant-sized smart boards, notebooks and a PowerPoint presentation having devised a plan to drop a bowling ball on my head. But I digress.

Weeds, conversely, I haven’t killed enough of. You rip them out by the roots, you spray them with illudium phosdex or gasoline, you curse them with a shaman’s fervour, and still, they don’t listen. They come back every week in spring and summer, every year. You’d think one of them would have spread the word to the others by now, but no. Stubborn and relentless.

POTUS Fabric

Neither ants nor weeds are wanted. Anywhere by anyone. They are invaders and despoil beauty. Just like the current POTUS, yet they (and he) still persist, in every garden, every city, every country, continent and country.

Yet accept them we must. We have no choice as they are part of the fabric of life. As we all know the fabric of life isn’t smooth cashmere with a satin liner and Merino wool. It’s more like an itchy, discount wool blend with a polyester weave, surrounded by a lovely layer of wet burlap. Furthermore, this fabric has not been well tailored, there are loose ends, it’s a hideous pastel color, probably mauve and green, and is ill-fitting and creates tremendous lint balls.

But it’s all the fabric we have, so bad parts are there as well as good parts.  Like ants and weeds, we can’t only have the good parts, we have to accept the bad.

Conversely, the ants and weeds that support the current leader of the free world and a bunch of hotels is something everyone has to learn to live with. There is no presidential pest removal service. Well there is, but you have to wait four years to replace him legally or find incriminating photos of him with a Russian prostitute.

Relentless Patience

To remove weeds and ants, one must have patience, perseverance, a large sum of money, a diet high in fibre and chocolate danish, and the ability to take defeat gracefully and with dignity. But stomping and cursing, foaming at the mouth and unspecified acts rage confined to your bathroom only are also helpful in dealing with this intractable problem.

So be sure to accept the situation, do not fly off the handle, unless you know you can win, deal with the unpleasantness as best as you can, and please, for me, destroy some weeds and ants.

Chronically imbalanced and low on sugar,

Facundo Thiago Salvador da Costa Gonclaves Schmidt