Ants Marching

I hate ants! They are my enemies! As a science girl, I have respect for all living things (except spiders...they just creep me out), but the ants have crossed the line. You know, I can deal with the occasional insect that mistakenly wanders into our cozy home, blindly looking for shelter or food. But ants are on a mission. They know exactly what they're doing, and they do it in mass! They're a frickin' army!

I never remember having an ant problem before having children. In fact, the place that ants are a chronic problem for me is right under Jackson's chair at the kitchen table. At one point this ant season I was watching them intently trying to discover their entry point into our fort so I could secure our borders. It turns out they were actually camping out under our hardwood floor and emerging from the tiniest crack directly underneath Jackson's chair like a dog waiting on crumbs to fall. Clever little things. All day I fight to keep the floor clean around his chair. Then after supper tonight there are large crumbs in a 3-foot radius surrounding his chair. HOW DOES HE DO IT? Doesn't he know I'm fighting an ant war here?

Today I actually made a mini-science lesson for Jackson out of them. "Wow, Jackson, look at how the ants are using teamwork to move that big chunk of food across the floor. See?" "Yeah, mom, that's cool!" "OK, now bring me the vacuum."

Tonight as I looked at the remainder of Jason's birthday cake sitting on our kitchen counter I wondered aloud what would happen if I left it on the floor for the ants overnight. Would there be a clean plate in the morning (one less dish to wash!)? Would they all die of sugar overdose? Or would the cake increase their strength and numbers so much that they used their incredible teamwork to carry us out of the house in our sleep, thereby officially taking control of the house?

I hate ants.

ps...this blog title was inspired by the worship pastor at our awesome church who performed "Ants Marching" last Sunday in church. It fit really well with the sermon, which was on consumerism. Check it out here.