Ant Invasion

I don't like bugs.

Growing up in the south, I learned to tolerate their existence: mosquitoes, grand-daddy long legs, cockroaches, june bugs, random spiders. However, one thing I could never get used to was when insects that were meant to live outside, suddenly found their way inside. This is partly why the two weeks on the farm were so challenging for me - I shared my cave with a wide assortment of multi-legged and winged creatures, that loved to say "hello" to me in the middle of the night.

Therefore, as you can probably imagine, I was thrilled and relieved to return home to my apartment in Jerusalem. An apartment with solid walls and a door - an apartment in which I could lock myself inside and lock all other living organisms out.

At least, that was the plan. Until I returned home on Saturday and discovered swarms of ants in various areas of my apartment.

This is the first step into my apartment, near my front door. This is just one of several large piles of them that I discovered as the evening progressed...

You might not be able to see from the picture, but about half of those ants in that pile have wings. This became rapidly apparent to me, as some were also flying around my apartment... After some extensive online research (and panicking), I learned that winged ants are the female, breeding ants. And, if you suddenly discover swarms of them in your home, that likely means that it is mating season, and new ant colonies are being developed.

So, evidently, while I was away, some ants decided to turn my apartment into a brothel. These mating swarms come out only in the evening hours, and then disappear by morning. The only sign that they were there just hours before is a small pile of dead bodies - a handful of the males who successfully did their duty and then passed on. Though I'm generally not a fan of dead bugs in my home either, I was grateful for this small calling card. It helped me know that I was not actually going crazy; that there had, in fact, been thousands of ants in my apartment the night before.

I contacted my landlord and explained the issue. It was a bit of a challenge, since I didn't know the Arabic word for "ants" and he wasn't sure what kind of insect I was talking about (it also didn't help that I was speaking extremely fast - because of the panic - and that made my english harder to understand). He told me he would look for some poison. I told him I would do the same.

Later that day, I found a nearby grocery store (super excited about this discovery, by the way. It's just a couple streets from my apartment and they have milk and eggs and other food basics there, hoorah!) and purchased some ant poison. I then scampered home, ready to get rid of these pesky insects before dusk fell.

However, when I got home and pulled out the can of spray to read the directions, I realized they were written all in Hebrew....

After some more searching online, I decided the poison is probably best to spray directly on the ants, but I could spray it on surfaces/areas that they frequent as well. Since it wasn't night yet, I didn't see any piles, so I just began general clean-up of my apartment (aka sweeping up dead ant bodies), and spraying the places I had seen them the night before. As I was doing this, however, I opened a cabinet to get a storage container out, and suddenly felt things crawling on me.

I then noticed that there was a swarm of ants inside my cabinet, which were then also collecting on me as I stood there with hand on the door of it.

I might have freaked out a little bit. I screeched, did some jumping around my apartment as I flicked ants off of my legs and arms. And then I grabbed my Hebrew can of poison and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed.

I was eager to put an end to at least one pile of the ants, but this plan backfired slightly - the aerosol can sprayed so forcefully that it actually blew the ants off of the door and sent the winged ones into a poison-filled flight. It was like I had turned them all into little kamikaze pilots, spiraling in ten different directions. More screaming ensued as I dodged the bodies.

I did eventually manage to spray all the areas. And then cleaned up all the carnage. They didn't return that night, and I went to bed feeling like I had won some huge victory. Of course, I had to sleep surrounded by poison fumes since my apartment has very little air circulation, but that was a price I was willing to pay.