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The Newsletter >
Pulling the Fire Ant Plug
October 29, 2008
“Where are you going with that ant killer?” I am always suspicious when children I have given birth to wander through the house carrying killer fire ant granules.
“To kill fire ants.” Maren is our youngest daughter and not given to extended explanations unless pressed.
“That’s for fire ants that have set up machine gun nests in the yard—out in the yard,” I explained.
“That’s where I’m headed,” she explained back.
“I thought you were cleaning out your car. You know the car that’s really still our car?”
“Yep.” And with that she left the building—fire ant granules still tightly clutched in her hot little hand.
It’s never a good sign when non-human species start to colonize your motor vehicles. It means that 1) the vehicle has not moved for way too long or 2) the non-human species have mutated to using grappling hooks and ladders.
In our case the fire ants living in Maren’s car had taken advantage of the broken window, dangling side-view mirror, under inflated tires, and collapsed fuel pump ($1,247.39 to repair) to set up a new nation. The car still had a roof and fire ants are no dummies. They had seen a new world with a roof, and they had claimed it for their own. They even had little flags. When they started to build little wooden forts we knew that it was time to pull the plug. The nice junk men towed the car away yesterday. Imagine the fire ant’s surprise when they wake up on the moon after going to sleep on earth.
I jumped on my lawn tractor, recently, and fire ants boiled out from under the skid pad all over my left foot, but those fire ants had used grappling hooks and ladders to climb on board, because I mow pretty fast, and it’s the only explanation. I just can’t conceive of fire ants that can run as fast as I can mow, and can leap onto a speeding lawn mower.
Once I had a rat living in my van engine, but I think that he was just hitchhiking, and recently our neighbors moved away and rudely left their five cats behind, who now live under our grandchildren’s wading pool, behind the garbage cans, and next to our air conditioner. The cats tried to conquer Maren’s car through the broken window, but the fire ants drove them back. The war lasted for a whole day and night.
That’s how we know when it’s time to put a vehicle out of its misery-- when the feral cats fighting to live in it out number the bucket seats, or the repair bill exceeds the cost of ant killer required to poison the alien insect invasion, added to the total value of all the junk riding around in the trunk, divided by the number of missing hubcaps.
We got $150.00 bucks for the whole mess. Have an ant free, new car smell kind of week.
Linda (Car Talk) Zern
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