So, here’s the thing about ants. I hate them.

Don’t get me wrong. Out in nature, tooling around and being all industrious, building sandy tunnel nations and collecting food for winter and harping at the grasshoppers to get their ass in gear, that’s fine. Shine on you tiny diamonds.

But I have a problem with ants in the house.

When I was just a wee little Bliss, a Blissling if you will, no more than 7 years old, is where this all started. We’d only been living in the house I grew up in for about a year at the time. It was Easter, and my sister and I had very pretty matching dresses my mother had sewn for us. I don’t remember what color was mine, but hers was blue.

I was very excited this particular Easter, because not only was it the year the new Catholic Church was opening, for the very first time for that service, but because my mother had made a cake shaped like a bunny. She had used many colors of frosting and a star-tip on a frosting tube to decorate that bunny all over in many pointy starshaped dots, so it actually looked like fur. It was finished, and set on the counter with a plastic cover over it.

We went off to mass, and it took place out in the parking lot. I fidgeted a lot, and looked at the pretty hats and wished I had one, and got my father to promise to explain what a moar-gedj was and why everybody cheered when it was burned in that brass bowl. Soon, though not soon enough, we were on our way home, and my brain was filled with the though of that bunny cake.

I ran into the house, did a U-turn just long enough to wipe the dirt off the bottom of my plasticky mary janes, and then made a beeline for the kitchen. I was just tall enough to see over the edge of the counter, and reached out to lift the edge of the plastic cover to peek at the cake, eager to see those sweet points of white and purple and blue frosting.

I was greeted with the sight of a writhing black mass.

Ants, hundreds, thousands of them had found their way into the kitchen and up to the counter, where they’d been busily disassembling my Easter cake to carry off to their damnable little sandy holes. My parents rushed us kids in one direction into the house, and the cake in the other to get it and its terrible passengers outside. There was no special cake for Easter.

I. Hate. Ants.

So here I am, sitting at the table minding my own business, when I feel a sharp tiny pinch on my foot. I look down, and most of the floor is in shadow – the light in the room is only from the microwave behind me, and my computer. I turn on the light, and am greeted by the sight of a lost half peanut, surrounded by a busy little crowd of ants, and one little bastard freeclimbing across my foot.

I did what anybody in my position would do. I got the Windex and some paper towels. I sprayed them until they were flailing and twitching, from underneath the table all the way back to the spot where the crack in the floorboard disappeared under the radiator, and then I squished and wiped with the paper towel.

No quarter was given, and my floor is now quite shiny.