I’ve had my encounters with ants over the years. The first incident that I recall was sitting on a bunch of fire ants on a playground in Selma, Alabama. I ran home screaming, with my brother helping me remove my ant-laden clothing. Calamine lotion was quickly brought out of the medicine cabinet by Mom and applied throughout my aching body.
In Selma, we had a run-in with tiny ‘sugar ants’ as Mom called them. Opening up a box of cereal one morning, it was full of the ingenious little devils. Mother couldn’t understand how they’d gotten into our trailer, with Dad finally figuring things out. A long line of them followed a copper water pipe into our home. I don’t recall how he took care of that problem, but I’m sure it involved fire.
It was in Selma that my father and a friend tried blowing up an anthill using an M-80 firecracker. Fireworks were much more explosive back then, and these fireworks are now illegal. We kids stood way back and watched as Dad’s friend lit the fuse. When it exploded, ants went flying everywhere, some landing on my father and his pal.
Incurring several bites, they eventually took care of their ant problem with a can of gasoline. Ethyl was only 19 cents a gallon back then. I’m talking tetra-ethyl leaded gasoline here and not Ethel from the “I Love Lucy” television series.
With gas poured down the hole and then a lit match tossed on top, the ensuing inferno baked a good many into well-done steaks for hungry birds to dine on. I’d imagine fire-in-the-hole did the same to those trying to escape.
Fire ants in San Antonio and Lubbock, Texas, were some of the biggest I’ve ever seen. Viewing them as fair game, I often brought out my magnifying glass and, using rays from the sun, fried the things alive. Just like Rice Krispies, listen close enough—with no background noise—they’d “Snap, Crackle, and Pop.” My son, Gunnar, was taught how to hunt ants this way early on.
Large black carpenter ants in Alaska ate small holes through the plywood T111 siding on our house. They hid out in the grooves, and when confronted, were hard to eradicate.
Woodpeckers eventually came along, trying to help me out, leaving shotgun-reminiscent damage throughout the back wall. I finally got rid of both pests by eliminating rotten wood that was stacked in the backyard. Automotive Bondo was used to patch the damage, and then it was painted over.
Arizona is home to some of the largest ant hills I’ve ever had to destroy. After our house was built, mounds would appear randomly throughout the yard. The residents inside these dwellings were plump red fire ants, which were very fast runners. It was hard keeping these pests under the deadly beam of my magnifying glass. Eventually, a cup of gasoline and a match took care of them just as it had for the old man.
Last Easter, my wife and I began purchasing candy two weeks in advance to send to our grandchildren in Minnesota. The chocolate bunnies, still in their plastic bags, would not all fit in the flat-rate box I had. Taking the foil-wrapped candy out of their protective plastic sacks and pouring them all into my container, sufficient tape was used to seal things up before adding the address label.
For whatever reason, three long weeks after they’d been mailed, a tracking number claimed that the box finally arrived. Expecting to receive a phone call from the kids thanking us, I got just the opposite from my daughter. “The kids opened their box and it was full of ants!”
I don’t know how that happened. Joleen’s brother in Kansas, Calvin, has been a postal worker for nearly 40 years. Telling him about the incident, not once has he run across ants in a package. He believes that wherever the box sat for an additional week, ants must’ve been in either that building, truck, or container.
With Halloween rapidly approaching, I purchased five bags of Brach’s Fall Mix candy: a bag each for the grandkids and their parents. Not wanting to disappoint them this year, 200 realistic small plastic ants were ordered from Amazon. I’ll glue several on the candy wrappers and then dump the remaining ones in the box just for effect.
Some might question the sanity of this joke, yet just like frying ants with a magnifying glass—sometimes a guy’s gotta do what he’s gotta do—merely for the sake of entertainment, or a good laugh.
I’m sure my grandkids will get a kick out of this, and hopefully, they’ll put the ants to good use afterwards, like their grandfather, by taking them to the school cafeteria, a friend’s house, or better yet, dropping a few on the table of a fine restaurant.
This is the type of thing they’ll be telling their own children and grandchildren about long after I’m gone. It’s called in certain circles, good memories!
I like to write junk... 