Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium
The house I grew up in is a center entrance white colonial built in 1926 or '27. And it was, as savvy realtors are wont to say, long on charm. One of its charms was the classic white picket fenced-in backyard. The gate to the picket fence had a picturesque arbor over it. To complete the picturesque, a wisteria vine had been trained to grow over it. When the vine was in bloom, the long hanging purple blooms were more than charming. After my Dad had permanently vacated the premises, this vine's training left with him. Gardeners consider wisteria an aggressive plant. For many years it did behave itself but finally grasping that the coast was clear, it jumped the arbor and attached itself to a gutter. From there it ran along the back of the house right under my bedroom windows. Artistically speaking, it looked very charming. But it was not a charm without a great cost as my mother found out when she finally hired someone to cut it all back.
The wooden shingles trapped underneath the wisteria had turned to rot. A neighbor came over to look at the problem. His reaction was to put up a ladder and start tearing off the shingles to see how deep the rot was underneath. He not only found more rot, he found an enormous colony of Carpenter ants. When sunlight was shed on the Carpenter ant colony, the entire colony freaked. According to our neighbor they went scrambling in 10,000 different directions. He advised a bug man, a carpenter and a painter. A few hours later, after my mother returned from hanging the laundry on the clothesline, she called to me saying,
"Come outside."
I followed her over to the area of the exposed Carpenter ant colony. She stopped and with big eyes said, "Listen."
I listened. And I could hear what sounded hundreds of tiny buzz saws. "What's that"
"The ants. They've been discovered. They're tunneling deeper into the wood trying to hide."
The bug man was called but, unfortunately, he was not able to come until the next week. So for the next few days the buzz saws of the ants chomping through the wood continued non-stop. Those ants were busy little beavers, literally. Then, one morning when one of my sisters and I were sitting at the breakfast table deep into our bowls of Frosted Flakes my mom came in from the garage. "Come outside" she said. We followed her outside.
"Look!" she said while pointing to a thin solid black line moving steadily across our pebbled drive. My sister and I crouched down for a closer inspection. What we saw was the closest thing I've seen to the Israelites escaping Egypt. The entire Carpenter Ant colony was on the move. There were ants of all sizes marching along one right after another. A lot of the bigger ants were carrying something. Our eyes followed the line and it disappeared into the grass of our next door neighbor's yard.
"What are they carrying?" I asked.
"Their egg sacks. They're moving." my mother replied.
"Where?" my sister asked.
"There." my mother said, pointing to the big family room addition on our next door neighbor's house.
My sister and I moved to the picket fence to look closer. Then we looked back at our house. My mother was right. The colony of ants were marching in a unbroken line from our house, across the pebbled drive and into the grass, underneath the picket fence across the yard about 12 feet and right into a previously unforeseen hole at the foundation level of the big family room addition on our next door neighbor's house."
"Mom, you've got to tell them."
"They're not home. They left 2 days ago for a 2 week holiday. By the time they return the ants will all be settled in their new home."
"MOM?"
"I always knew that was a shady contractor. He must have used rotted wood. Ants are only attracted to rotted wood. The ants knew their days here are numbered here, so they must have sent out scouts to find a new home. And they found it. Who knew ants were so smart?" With that she went back inside.
My sister and I stayed outside for a while watching the ants march. Then, like the ants, we went on with our day and our lives. For almost the whole rest of the day those ants marched across our driveway and into our neighbor's addition. This colony was bigger than any of us imagined. Then all was quiet, literally. No more ant buzz saw sounds coming from our house. The bug man did show up as scheduled the next week. He took a look at our house and said it was one of the strangest things he ever saw. That a big ant colony had resided there until recently was obvious. But there was no evidence of any active ant colony. At all. He asked my mom if she had poisoned the ants herself. She said no and suggested that they might have moved. He thought that was a funny idea but did say they had to have gone somewhere. Soon after the bug man left the carpenter came and replaced the rotted wood and shingles. After the painter gave the house a fresh coat of paint, the entire episode was forgotten.
About 5 or 6 years ago my mother and I were chatting on the phone.
"Did I tell you the entire family room next door has to be replaced?" my mother asked.
"No! The entire family room? Why?"
"It's rotted-all the way through. The whole thing has to be replaced."
"How did that happen? Bad windows? Or was it the gutters?"
"They didn't say. But I know that was a shady contractor who built it. He must have used rotted wood."
My mother's mentioning of "rotted wood" caused the old lightbulb to off. "Mom! You never told them about the ants did you?" I exclaimed.
"What ants?"
"The Carpenter ants that were in our house underneath the old wisteria vine. When we discovered them, the picked up and moved the colony right into the family room addition next door. Don't you remember watching them crossing the driveway?"
"Oh. Those ants. Hmmn. Maybe I did I forget to tell them about them."
"Mom!!!!"
Call me crazy, but ever since President Obama meddled in the Middle East with his one day moustache and no wife at his side Cairo speech and the resulting devastation it had on the Iranian populace with the smack down following Ahmadinejad's 'election', I can't help but think of those ants and our neighbor's family room addition. After all, it was during the Carter years those Carpenter ants left our house for our neighbor's new addition.
If it's any consolation, the neighbor's new family room addition is gorgeous. But, what else would you expect, it was built during the Bush years....
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Your story reminded me of Charlton Heston’s ants – Marabunta:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047264/
Which led me to remember Crazy Raspberry Ants:
http://news.aol.com/article/crazy-rasberry-ants/492135
Which brought me to Zombie ants:
http://thebsreport.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/fire-ants-being-turned-into-headless-zombies-by-parasitic-flies-kind-of-like-obama-and-the-media/
Which got around to making a point about Obama and the media - so I don’t have to.
Posted by: George Pal | June 19, 2009 at 06:15 PM