"While the crickets clicked their cricky melodies, all the ants were fancy dancing with the fleas. Then up from under the ground, the worms came squirming around. Oh they danced until their legs were nearly lame. Every little crawling creature you could name. Everyone was glad. What a time they had. They were so happy they came."*

    So…my ants are back and they’re better than ever. They have multiplied in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. My only consolation is that they aren’t as big as the ones in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Or aliens like the ones in Them! They were aliens in Them!, right? I remember that it took place in the desert and maybe they had an ant spaceship. I could be making that up, I suppose. But I doubt it.

Ants Fancy Dancing. (Lacey, 2012) My goodness but I'm bad at art.

    Actually this whole Them! vs. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids debacle is presenting it’s own kind of conundrum. See, in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, if you’ll recall, the enormous ant in their backyard (actually not enormous because really they were small and the ant was regular size) was really sweet. So sweet, in fact, that they named him/she/it “Aunty” (clever name, that), and took rides on his/her/its back. 

Ron with Aunty in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (Joe Johnston, 1989). (Photo)

    But in Them!, the ants were heinous and mean and made a weird sound to call each other and liked to kill people. So, since I learn everything from the movies, I’m not sure if ants are good or evil. On the one hand, if they’re good, I feel really bad about murdering hundreds of them (too late). But on the other hand, if they’re evil, they could be making plans to gnaw off my face while I’m sleeping. Well, the joke’s on them because there’s so much ant spray floating around this apartment, we’ll all be dead before they reach my face.

Them! (Gordon Douglas, 1954)

Creepy, catatonic kid from Them!

"I eat you!" A quote that is not in Them! and an image that is.**

    (I’d like to briefly mention A Bug’s Life, as well. Despite how dumb and boring I found that movie, the main ant character, Filk, as portrayed by David Foley, was kind of awesome in a way. I would be friends with that ant. But only if he were a cartoon.)

    I also have those ant traps that are supposed to be so clever: the ones that you set against the baseboards and then the ants go in and get the poison and carry it back to the nest and kill everyone inadvertently. But I don’t think that if those worked my ant population would have grown to 80 times its original size. Fuck you, Combat!

    Here’s another question: what the hell has them so interested in my apartment? I looked around pretty well, and I can’t find any food or poop or dead bodies lying around, so why are they still here? Aren’t ants supposed to have one function in life? Getting food and carrying it home, right? You know how people are always saying how amazing it is that ants can carry ten batrillion times their weight? I don’t think that’s so amazing. I think it’s disgusting and greedy and sick. But even if it were true, they aren’t finding any food here so what are they taking back to the anthill? My TV? Nope. It's STILL HERE!

    I have just received a tip from my friend Danny on a mysterious thing called diatomaceous earth. One moment while I check the interwebs for clarification.(Pause). Okay, I'm back. Oh god, this stuff sounds disgusting. A quote from Wikipedia: “Diatomite is used as an insecticide, due to its physico-sorptive properties. The fine powder absorbs lipids from the waxy outer layer of insects' exoskeletons, causing them to dehydrate. Arthropods die as a result of the water pressure deficiency, based on Fick's law of diffusion. This also works against gastropods and is commonly employed in gardening to defeat slugs.” This is intense. It sucks their life right out of them. Like a vampire or a Suck-Cut ("It sucks, as it cuts!").***

    I don’t know if I have it in me to do this. Maybe I’ll go get some more of those Combat things tomorrow. Sigh out loud.

*"The Ugly Bug Ball", a song by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman from the movie Summer Magic (James Neilson, 1963). These two dudes were responsible for some really great songs (like Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and The Parent Trap type songs) but they remain on my enemies list for having composed "It's a Small, Small World." On a side note, the description of the Ugly Bug Ball, as explained in the lyrics above, is coincidentally the description of my worst nightmare.

**You have no idea how annoying it was to go back and add the exclamation point after every reference to Them!

***Wayne's World.