The Mice Have Returned

Yes, you read that right.

The mice have returned to our home.

In the form of carpenter ants.

The mice have been reincarnated as ants.

And they have brought an entire colony of mice ants with them.

I had quite the traumatic experience this morning when I went to shower.  First of all, who builds a stupid window inside a shower?  Dumbest.  Idea.  Ever.

So we have this wood frame around the window, that some idiot thought would be a great idea.  Seriously...did no one think about what would happen to the wood after time, as it was constantly hit with water????

Well, the wood has cracked and I did a temporary fix on it a few months ago.  The fix has now unfixed itself and is cracked again.  Essentially, in order to really fix the problem, we'd need to redo the entire tub/window nonsense.  Which would cost a LOT of money, which we do not have.  Still job hunting...

Because the crickets (and spiders) had returned, we bombed the house last month.  And we had hoped this would killed several hundred ants at one time.  But alas, we have been seeing them more and more.  And today, the stepped up the attack.

It was terrifying!!!

I just wanted to wash my hair in peace.

But NO!!!

The mice ants wouldn't have any of that!  They decided to choose this time to SHOW me how they were getting in and out of my bathroom.  I'd see these little legs sticking up out of the cracks and it made me want to vomit.  It was so disgusting!!  And creepy.  I was jumping around and screaming.

And then, I saw it.

I saw their evil intentions.

Several of them began lining up.

They were going to jump, one by one, off of the ledge to the bathtub floor.

Where my feet were.

I even felt one of them crawling around on the bottom of one foot.  The longer I stood there, frozen in horror, the more creeped out I became.

I finally decided to take the bottom of a soap dish and put it upside down over the crack.  They immediately started coming out of the woodwork.  LITERALLY.  There were probably 20 of them that started squirming out of the cracks.  I quickly finished my shower, and went straight for the Raid.

And I sprayed them.

All of them.

And the drain.

And the cracks.

And then I ran away.

Really, I just went to my friend's house, who actually gave me two things to write about this weekend.  I'm really excited about it, though it might ruffle some feathers.  But I was quite jumpy all day.  If a hair fell on my shoulder, I'd jump.  If I felt something brush against my leg, I'd jump.

Later this evening, I showed Kris the ants.  I was jumping around and screaming like a little girl when he moved the soap dish lid, as I bravely sprayed them with Raid.  Some of them were still moving.  I just kept spraying.  And then, they began to fall out of the cracks at the bottom of the window.  I ran out of there.  I made Kris spray the bottom of the tub and the drain, in case any other ants decide to take the dive.

Kris wants to try those liquid trap things, where they eat it and take it back to their nests (ewww!!).  I told him that was fine, but in the end to just plan on spending thousands of dollars tearing out that bathtub and window.  I am praying that we do resolve the problem without having to get an exterminator.  Time will tell.

For now, I'm terrified to take a shower.

Oh, and I think the animals are beginning to cycle back through.  If I am right, since the crickets went first, then ants came along, next up will be mice and then squirrels.  We very well may become the next Hoarders episode.  I may not survive...