Ants in my Car

Yes, there are ants in my car. Now, before you think and/or say anything, I'm aware of the fact that my car has always been a horrid mess. The irony here is that the ant activity has occurred SINCE I CLEANED IT AND HAVE BEEN KEEPING IT CLEAN. Maybe it's some sort of clutter-based karma, I don't know. I first discovered the ants living happily in the side skirt of the car, on the passenger side, where, of course, Jacelyn sits in her car seat. They didn't foray into the car itself, they just lived happily in the undercarriage, occasionally emerging onto the door panel, running busily back and forth. I was chagrined. I thought I had managed to rid myself of them when unbeknownst to me, Jacelyn dropped a animal cracker and empty juice box onto the floorboard. Tuesday evening when we went to the car to leave for our Daisy meeting the ants were teeming into the passenger seat floorboard in droves. Droves! I was horrified, removed the cookie and juice box, scraped most of the ants out, put Jacelyn in the front seat with a prayer and went on our way (the meeting is only a few blocks away).

At the meeting I told the other moms about the ants, probably insuring that I will never, ever drive for a field trip, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. When I got home I sprayed ant poison where they were living. That seemed to be that.

Fast forward to last night: Michelle and I went to a Mary Kay party (food was good, the skin care products were good, the foundation the woman gave me was YELLOW. She asked me how the mascara she coerced me into putting on felt and I actually said, "I can feel it on my eyes and want to claw it off", and a couple of the other guests agreed with me, it was a wonderful moment of female bonding). Our host gave us a bag of wonderful homemade mint-chocolate chip cookies to take home with us. I threw all my stuff in the backseat for the drive home, and when we got home forgot the cookies. I'm sure you can guess what happened next....more ants! That I discovered this morning, when I was putting our stuff in the car. Thankfully we were running a little early, so after a removing the cookies I sprayed the smallest dose of ant poison I could get away with and then left all the doors open and ran the vent as high as it could go on the fresh air setting to try and air out the car.

As late as humanly possible I put Jacelyn in her seat. She complained of a headache on the way to school and I knew, just knew, that I had poisoned her with the ant spray. She was fine once we got to school. I guess I'm going to have to detail the interior of the car with a fine tooth comb to fully rid myself of the little bastards. Sigh. If I would just cut the grass I might not have this problem. I think, because I have to park in the grass and the grass gets tall really quickly this time of year, they are climbing up via that damned bahia grass and settling in the car. So I guess my weekend holds yard work. Damn. Oh, and just so you know, neither Jacelyn or I have received a single bite from our little traveling companions. They seem content to leave us be, but I can't take the chance.

Teresa will be here soon! Hooray!