We have a room in our house that I’m not sure what to call. The old owners called it the Dog’s Room, presumably because they kept their dog locked in there, which probably wasn’t very nice for the dog. As the room that opens to the garage, it is dirty. As the room with the furnace, it is sooty. Poor dirty, sooty dog! The room also functions as a laundry. So sometimes I call it the Mud Room and sometimes the Furnace Room and sometimes the Laundry Room.
Today I might have called it the Ant Room, because it was crawling with ants, most of them winged. I saw a few and stomped on them, but with every stomp I noticed another live one, until I realized that they were everywhere and that eradicating them would require more than just my stomping foot. Further investigation revealed a mass of them emerging from a hole in the foundation slab. We had a full swarm on our hands
It sounds like a horrible scene, and I was startled at first but not really scared or disgusted. I have a certain amount of tolerance for generic types of ants. I won’t let them live in my house, mind you, but I’m not going to freak out while they’re here.
The emotion I’m feeling the most is relief. They appear to be pavement ants, which are relatively harmless. Had they been millipedes or centipedes, I would have been screaming, dancing around in fear that they’d crawl up my legs, and I would almost certainly have needed a shower after the encounter. Had they been carpenter ants or termites, I’d have been worried for my house. Our ants are like sweet little angels in comparison
It’s like they say—count your blessings. Every single ant in that swarm is a blessing because it’s not something worse.
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