I am not in the least bit squeamish about most creepy
crawlies apart from cockroaches, or ‘grillos’ as they are called here in
Algeria. I used to be absolutely
petrified of spiders when I was younger and could not go to sleep once I knew
there was one in my bedroom no matter how small. As soon as my Mum heard me call her in that
frantic tone she knew immediately ‘it’s a spider’. There’s nothing like moving to a country
where there are cockroaches and geckos to help see spiders in a rather harmless
and kind of mind-their-own-business frame of mind…I might even go so far as to
say that they almost seem nostalgic.
I have never minded ants…..actually I’ve always rather liked
them. They are hardworking and
industrious and mind their own business…..until now. Now……they are driving me, literally, up the
walls. We’ve had them in the kitchen and
the bathrooms in previous years and they were annoying but not to the point
where they drove me crazy…..until this year…..when they, in their hordes of
millions, decided to make numerous homes in the brickwork behind my kitchen
walls and around my kitchen counters. At
first it was a case of clearing a few off the kitchen counter between the
cooker and the sink…the one I use the most.
I used to spray them with a mixture of bleach and water, but after a few
incidents where one of my daughter’s favourite tops had a red, discoloured line
where it came into contact with the counter top, I switched to vinegar and
water which was a lot kinder on my family’s clothes, but had the same effect on
the ants….although unfortunately only a temporary one. They obviously went off and regrouped and
started to come out in their hundreds…..they were on two of the counters, the
cooker top and the sink.
Now I must admit to feeling a bit guilty about my absolute
wish to totally annihilate every ant in my home. But it did start to feel as if these little
creatures were taking over my whole life.
In my Aqeedah class we were studying the Prophets and our homework was
to research one of the Prophets. I chose
Solomon and found myself even here immersed in ………. ants...... because in the Qur’an,
in Surah An-Naml Allah tells us about
the Prophet Solomon (May Allah’s blessing be upon him) who had the ability to
communicate with the animals and birds.
He was travelling through a valley with his army of soldiers and he
overheard an ant warning all the other ants to return fast to their homes in
case Solomon and his men would tread on them by accident. So of course I felt like a big giant ogre
battling tiny armies of ants and I felt bad.
One of my friends suggested talking to the ants. Yes….tallking….to….the……ants and asking them
nicely to leave my home. She told me
that her husband had done that and that it had worked for them. Well…..I decided to do my whole ant whisperer
thing and I asked the ants, nicely, to leave my house….I asked in English, I
asked in derja, I asked nicely, and I asked firmly and then I threatened…..and
the ants totally ignored me and continued on their merry way taking over my
kitchen. Another friend suggested I do
what she does and just sweep them up in a dustpan and throw them out into the
garden. I had visions of me telling my
family that there was no food cooked because I was too busy ushering hordes and
hordes of ants out into the garden. I would come downstairs in the morning and the
first thing I had to do was to do battle with the ants – they were all over the
sink, all over the counter and the cooker top.
So I sprayed and sprayed and then got crafty and, after
doing some online research I placed little mounds of icing sugar mixed with
equal portions of bicarbonate of soda to entice them to eat the latter and
bring it back to the nest and kill the lot of them. I waited and waited
for it to work, and I watched as crowds of
ants happily dived in probably thinking all their birthdays had come at
once. Then I began to have a sneaking
suspicion that slowly but surely became a certainty, that these ants were
having a laugh at me. I could almost
swear that I saw them waving at me from the mounds of white goodies I had so
generously donated to them and I’m sure if I had Solomon’s (may Allah’s
blessings be upon him) gift of being able to hear them, I would hear them
shouting ‘PARTAAAAAAAAAY!’
Having done my research and watched them for hours (at least
it felt like hours) and learning more than I ever wanted to know about them, I
will be honest and say that they are really amazing creatures, mashAllah. Their power of smell must be phenomenal as
they have proved to me so many times.
One day I was chopping meat for the freezer and did it on the table
which, with no connections to any counter or worktop is the one place I feel I
can put food with the security that ants won’t be able to get at it. I could not believe my eyes when I suddenly
noticed a crowd of them on the corner of the table. When I investigated I saw that they had
traveled across the kitchen floor, up the chair, and from there, climbed up
the tablecloth the end of which was just barely touching it, and up onto the
table. Another time they climbed across
the kitchen floor, up the side of the freezer and across the top to reach a
small opened container I had left there with some of my icing sugan/bicarbonate
conconction……how ironic.....now I KNEW they were having a laugh!
So then I decided to go back to the source and I started to
really study them and try to find out their exit holes. Do you have any idea of how long it takes an
ant to find its home! These creatures that are so super-efficient in so many ways take an
enormous amount of time wandering around looking for the entrance to their
home. If I didn’t know better I might
almost think these ants were wandering around trying to throw me off the scent
so that I would give up and go away and not discover their little hidey holes….but they’re not that
clever…..are they???.Or it could just be that they are like Algerian men…..unable
to go from A to B without going via Z e.g. I send my 13 year old son out for
milk from the shop that is 5 minutes’ walk away and he returns 2 hours later.
He says, ‘I went to see my friend,’ who, of course, lives much further away than
the shop. After quite a lot of time watching the ants I discovered them
emerging from behind the tap over the sink, from three holes beneath two of the counter worktops, along
the gas pipe down onto the cooker, from a teensy weensy hole on the window sill
over the sink and from the bottom of the wooden frame of the kitchen door. Do you have any idea of how many woman-hours
it took of me watching them to discover these little holes?
I then rolled up my sleeves and started mixing cement in a
little box to cover up all the holes, and, in the process learnt all I never
wanted to know about mixing cement….at first it seems like liquid which is
great for doing the fiddly jobs like around the back of the tap over the sink,
then it becomes drier and clings together a bit better which is great for
bridging gaps in the cupboards under the counter. The latter sounds easier than in actual
practice because it’s very difficult to reach in under the counter worktop
unless I remove the shelves and actually lie in the cupboard….with all the
excess cement falling on top of me. The
only alternative was a mirror, my mobile phone, a tin of mushrooms and a tin of
tuna. I put the mirror on the shelf
pointing up at the hole, I put the flashlight on in my phone and faced it too
towards the hole and propped it up with a can of mushrooms on its side against
a tin of tuna to stop it sliding off…..I think a tin of any kind would probably
do the trick! Then I started to fill in
the holes all along the underside of the worktop, and in the other holes around
the kitchen including following the gas pipe up the wall and across the top
until I found where it was screwed to the wall and where the ants were emerging
in their hundreds. I even went outside the kitchen into the back garden and
covered up any holes I could find there from where they could enter the house. It’s an exhausting and time consuming process
and the song ’99 miles from LA’ kept coming into my head except in my case it
was ’99 miles of counters and walls’.
I felt a great sense of satisfaction once I’d finished as I felt
as if I’d reclaimed my kitchen, and was so happy to get up in the morning and
find my kitchen ant-free. But then…….I
realised……the ants were just lulling me into a false sense of security because
slowly but surely they all started to emerge again! When I stopped pulling my hair out and
screaming like a banshee I looked and
discovered that they had just moved along and found other holes from which to
emerge and torment me. So again I got
out my cement and….well you know the drill.
Whenever any of the kids came into the kitchen all they saw was me
either hunched down staring underneath the counter or standing in the middle of
the kitchen floor staring up at the pipework at the top of the walls. At other times I started to relay all the new
cubby holes I had found or my new plan of extermination to the point that my
daughter told me I was becoming extremely boring….my only topic of conversation
was ants. And when she caught me
shouting ‘THERE! TAKE THAT! I GOT YA!’ at my miniscule adversaries she
started to really worry about my sanity.
When I found that they were emerging from the top of the
wall all along the other side of the kitchen where three pipes came out of the wall at the same point I nearly cried. They were using
the pipes as some kind of super-highway where they careened along at
neck-breaking speed all along three walls to climb down the gas pipe onto the
cooker top (no matter how clean I kept it).
I might have found their resilience and ingenuity amazing….if only they
weren’t in MY house! I felt utterly and
totally defeated because there wasn’t any way I could get my pudgy fingers into
the holes between the pipes. I also
discovered something new about ants….they can excavate as I would find new
holes right beside the ones I had blocked up.
So now I feel that I have no recourse left to me other than to go out
and buy a gun. Now……before you all write
me off as a total lunatic with visions of me in my kitchen taking pot shots at
my walls trying to shoot every ant in sight,(although I must admit it’s a very
appealing thought in my ant-obsessed mind) I will elaborate and say a silicone
or caulk gun and hope that this will reach into areas where no human has been
before. It’s either that or go with one
of my sons’ suggestions and just blow the whole kitchen up and start again…..extreme
as it sounds don’t think I haven’t considered it….in one of my manic
moments. Throughout all this battle
there is one tune that keeps coming into my head ‘I WILL SURVIVE!’ But I’m not sure that’s my own battle cry….or
just the ants getting inside my head…….
