I must say, wrapped as it was in that beautiful red gift paper, it was quite a thoughtful-looking Christmas present. That’s the allure of wrapping paper, though, isn’t it?

I learned this early on:  people will take anything on this earth if you just wrap it pretty enough. 

It can be a thoughtless happy, a re-gift (as American as the NRA), a genuine present, anything. Many is the household item, kitchen utensil, family portrait, that I, as a child, took and re-wrapped and gave to Nana or U.L., or Tigi, or whomever. They always graciously opened their presents, oohing and aahing, as if they’ve not used that wooden spatula a million times last week alone, or as if it were a sheer stroke of amazing luck that the picture frame already held a portrait of our family in it.

I'm just a boy who can't say no.

I had this prepared sensation upon opening this particular present, myself. (Although, who knew, it might be a wonderful gift). To my initial dismay, it was oatmeal soap. I thought I’d quickly rebounded with the expected smile.

I had not.

My sister-in-law, as a method of defense, immediately followed what must have been a sustained register of confusion on my face by saying she made it.

“It’s got oatmeal in it,” she continued.  Since when did oatmeal become a saving grace?

I thanked her. Because that’s what well-behaved people do.  I took it home and for a week, let it sit on the counter in the bathroom, adjusting to the scent of it. I’ve never particularly liked oatmeal.

And then, as was bound to happen, I was caught in between real soaps, one afternoon, and had no choice but to use it. It was…rather nice. Smooth after effect, no oily residue. I began to hold secret joy in using it, though I couldn’t have told you why.

It quickly became my daily routine: the use of the oatmeal soap came right before brushing my teeth; after my gargle of Listerine. Every morning, this is how I started my day.

Never, ever did I even remotely think that I would need to safeguard the oatmeal soap from the Natural World. I mean, the soap was in my bathroom, wasn’t it safe from the outside?

And at first, it was innocent enough.

An ant or two here or there.  Not a big deal.  I’m no expert on ants, but I’m guessing they have big mouths, because by the time word spread, and it certainly wasn’t spread by me, one morning there were ants galore everywhere, and of course, that was not to be tolerated.  So, away went the oatmeal soap.

Shame. That.

We were ant-free for a few days.  But then, you see, what happened is that those ants decided that perhaps we’d simply put the oatmeal soap somewhere else, and they took it upon themselves to find out where the new hiding place was.  In their small, insect minds that place became the bathtub.

And that, in my opinion, is where they made their fatal mistake. 

I adore bathtubs; I love to bathe. I love to shower. I have an entire bathing ritual that I must observe every day, and yes, it takes a goodly while, and yes, I may do it several times a day, but I can’t help it. This need for cleanliness is innate and omni-controlling; it’s one reason I caved into to the blame oatmeal soap, in the first place.  Once while on a long road trip, I stopped midway at a friend’s friend’s house (twice removed acquaintance of mine) for the sole purpose of bathing en route to my destination; I’d gotten hot in the car. 

So, as you may imagine, to come between me and my bathing is a capital offence.

Furthermore, I will admit that I was naive in my initial attack against the ants. I’d had no previous beef with ants, I didn’t know their martyred ways of constant, constant coming and coming and coming.

We both learned quickly, though.

So, anyway, there, in plain view, a few days later, was the typical slightly curved solid line of ants down the corner of the wall and onto the cold edge of the tub, stretching out from the base of the corner to the Pomegranate and Mango Body Shampoo, positioned ever so preciously unaware on the other side of the bathtub.  I took several hand-wound layers of toilet paper and annihilated the entire string of them. 

C’est la vie, I said to myself, giddy at having found an opportunity to incorporate a French phrase into some part of my day. Isn’t that the mark of the wealthy, to pepper dialogue, even monologue, with French? Triumphant, I settled into my bath, with my New Yorker, and continued to giggle, this time over the horrendous choices the poetry editor had made (such awful poems in The New Yorker, really, just sad; I need to call him or her). 

The following morning (and in tangent here I should point out that I do not do mornings) there they were again.  I was mortified.  How stupid is the ant!  Did they not realize the evening before that some of their own did not return home?  That their brothers, daughters, neighbors had been killed?  I had killed an entire line of ants the night before, and this new string of ants, I mean, had none of them noticed?  What, were they like, sitting at church going, “Hmm, wonder where Nancy and Peter are?  Not like them to miss church?” (I’d killed the ant string on a Sunday evening, hence the church reference).  Was the ant indeed this daft?

I mean, good gracious!  The stubbornness of the ant is boggling to the human mind.  And that’s when it hit me.  See, ants relay information to other ants through chemical releases (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982206018343), and after watching them, up close, I’d like to personally add that they also communicate through the movement of their bodies and antennae, much like the honeybee (I’m making this part up, naturally, but still, it’s my blog), and so, like the honeybee they are able to discuss and determine what’s going on, who’s gotten married, who’s been fired, who’s going to graduate school, etc. by simply gyrating their thoraxes in a cloud of chemicals (or it may be thoraces) vigorously in several directions (I am still making this part up). 

See, when I killed that string of ants the night before, I’d made the mistake; I had left no warning to the other ants by leaving behind a few dead bodies.  Having seen none, they probably just assumed that the other ants had gone on back home, had done their jobs, gotten off early, whatever.

Well, that was fine and all for last night, then, but not this time, I told myself. 

No, sir, not this time.  This time I was going to give the ants a bit of an alcohol problem, rubbing, not drinking.  If the ants wanted to talk through body language, then I was going to give them something to say.  I wrapped my finger around a Bounty napkin, dipped the edge of it in isopropyl and crushed ant after ant after ant…but just a few, and scattered along their visible Maginot line.  That’s where the beauty of my plan lay.

See, what would happen now is that the following ant would come across this isopropylized dead ant and create a panic unlike any ever seen before in the ant world that would ripple up and down the ant line, like a busy signal.  It was going to be a message they would understand loud and clear. 

I stood back and watched.  I could almost hear the panic taking shape through little conversations that I started making up for the ants’ reactions as each one discovered the dead body of another.

Whoa!  Oh god, oh god, oh god, Betsy’s down!!  Oh god, god, she’s down!  She’s, I don’t know, she’s like completely unresponsive!!  Tell James.  Oh god, oh god, she’s dead.  Move it!! Get out of here!!

Sweet Jerusalem! Roger isn’t moving.  Roger?  Roger?  Wait, no, no, nothing about this makes sense, something’s not right.  Roger!?  Oh sweet mother of pearl, he is flat out dead.  Heaves above!! Get the hell out of here…call Moody, he’s got to know, he’s got to warn the others!!

No!! No!  You bastards!! Not Emily…no, no, no, no…she was was too young, she was too young…no, no, no…

Now, replace that sandwich with a bathtub, please.

It was pure terror, mania, ants were going crazy. But, they didn’t retreat. No. They put up a united front and kept on coming, by the veritable dozens.  Dozens…

So, I waited awhile and let them all group themselves together by skill, gender, or whatever categories they were utilizing, and then I turned the shower head on them and washed them down the drain.

After that, it become a daily war.  Wake up, take a shower, turn the shower head on the ants, dress, brush my teeth, turn the shower head back on the ants, and go to work. I called pest control when gnats, after absolutely nowhere, started showing up with the ants; it was all just too, too much.

I appreciate that persistence has no pesticide, at least in its intention, but I couldn’t allow for insects to have such truisms, not in my bathroom.

So, I did what anyone would have done, and probably done before it’d gotten this far: I called Orkin.

And then…my sister-in-law.

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