Bug Invasion

          So...I've been thinking lately that we just can't seem to get a break from weird, and a bit miserable, happenings.  I'll tell you the newest one here in a minute, but then I realized that these little and weird happenings are much better than trials that we could be getting.  I'd much rather deal with no air conditioning briefly, postponed house purchasing, a small car accident where no one got hurt, low cash flow, and the lastest adventure (swarming ants) then deal with say...a more serious accident, or a seriously sick family member, or any number of things I could mention.  So bizarre as it sounds I was very thankful in my prayers last night for our recent small trials.  I would much rather them any day.

        

       So here is our latest trial.  Swarming, flying ants invading our home.  Yep, that's right.

        It all started innocently enough.  "Ralphie" and I would play on the back porch and these big inch-long flying ants would occasionally come at us and I would smash them. They have huge pinchers and the last thing I wanted was for Ralphie to get bit.  I can remember getting bitten by New Mexico ants as a kid and it hurts and stings for a long time after.  Pretty soon though we start finding a few in the house and, like, you know, 5 instead of 2 outside on the porch.  So I tell "Charming" to get some bug spray for us to take care of them.

        It takes him a few days and finally he gets some.  He sprays the back of the house's perimeter then decides he will spray our bedroom sliding door too since the few days before this we'd seen 5+ in our room.  Well, I was downstairs helping Ralphie with something when Charming calls from upstairs, "Uh...Sandy?  Can you come up here?

        I kind got scared from the sound of his voice and asked, "is it gonna freak me out Charming?"

         "Maybe."  He paused and then said, "actually maybe you shouldn't come up here."

        Yah, right, I was right around the corner and almost there...so I walk in and almost die.  There are like at least 50 ants crawling around on our carpet, walls, blinds etc.  And then I'm like panting crazily, cause I seriously have bug nightmares all the time and this was like a nightmare come true.

        And with a guilty look he says, "it's worse."  And opened the sliding door blinds. 

       I seriously almost start hyperventilating.  There are literally HUNDREDS of these huge flying ants covering our porch.  Hundreds. Maybe even thousands...I was never good at guessing numbers.  And even weirder they are like in clumps.  I only have a cell phone picture of the first night, and it can't figure out how to get it on here...but anyway...

        Charming sprays the door and I texted my mom the picture.  My dad calls back and says Charming better spray the entire perimeter of the house.  So we head outside and he starts spraying.  I spotted our neighbor Kimberly outside and went to ask her about the bugs to see if she had a problem too...because if it was just us I hated to think what that meant.

         So I asked her and she tells us that it had happened the first year she lived here.  Her back porch was black it was so covered with them.  And that her pest control selling neighbor told her they migrate through here sometimes and land on the roofs.  And that usually they are high in trees when they migrate and so you never notice them.  But where we are there are no trees and her house at the time was the highest in the area.  So they landed on her house only.  She said she had to have someone spray the roof to kills them and it helped.  She also told us she had been seeing tons of them too...and that since we were the only two two-story houses nearby that's probably why it was just us.

         So Charming doesn't want to spray the roof and he says we'll just wait it out.  We vacuum up all the ants in our room and more and more just still keep coming in.  So I slept in Ralphie's room with him, refusing to have to worry about the bugs climbing on us or crawling into our ears.  Which I did dream of and had to keep getting up to check on Charming all night.  The next day they just got worse.  And the next day worse.  Charming still wouldn't spray and I still refused to sleep in our bedroom.

          About three nights ago or so it rained hard and I washed a bunch of them down.  Here is a picture of the ants after I had washed a bunch down already.

Then the next day after that there were even more than I had washed down.  Here they are on the roof flying, buzzing and falling in clumps.

 Here they are in  their piles in the backyard.  They are nasty huh?

 FINALLY it just got so bad in our room and on our balcony that Charming finally sprayed the room, porch and door.  And they finally all died.  Here is a pick before I washed them off last night.  They had blown into piles (piles at least 1/2 an inch thick)...just imagine these in clumps and spread all over the porch.  Ick ick ick!  I am iching just thinking of it.  Anyway, I think the poison helped and the worst is over...but seriously yuck!  Ugh!

(Charming's foot in an attempt to show the scale of the pile...this one was 1 inch deep in the middle at least)

The rain gutter as I was washing them out.

GROSS!!!

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