Oh, How I Hate Thee

Alright.  I'm going to take a deep breath and try to type this whole post out without using any expletives, but please know that in my internal dialogue, those bad words are spewing forth.

We have ants.  Not like, "hey, we have some ants that eat our crumbs that fall on the floor."  Although, they do that too.  No like, "WE HAVE {insert bad word} ANTS!!!!"

They inhabit and terrorize every surface of our home.  You could sit or stand in any position in the ENTIRE house and spot some from any angle.  They are in our dirty clothes.  They are in our clean clothes.  They are in our bath towels.  They bore holes in sealed food items.  They climb over clean dishes and dirty dishes alike.  They eat holes in our clean clothes.  They are in dresser drawers, sinks, desks.  They bite us as we sleep.  They climb in distinct black lines up and down from windows, doors, and cracks in the cement walls.  They infiltrate through electrical outlets and under the door.  Nothing is safe from these little jerks.  I hate them.  No, worse... I vehemently abhor them.

We have tried every bug poison available in Haiti to rid our house.  We spend a ridiculous amount of time each day cleaning to prevent them (i.e. following our children around with a vacuum cleaner and sweeping nearly 10 times a day).  We spend hours emptying drawers and shaking out clothes.  Daily.  Sometimes multiple times a day.  

Lucky us, as we were researching ants and extermination techniques, we discovered that our variety of ants are some of the most tenacious and hard to get rid of.  Every search query ends with someone stating that the only way to truly rid your house of them, is to hire a professional exterminator and seal all windows and doors.  Well... neither of those recommendations are going to happen here in Haiti.  

 These ants were crawling on the girls' bedroom wall, transporting eight (8!!!) queens.  That cluster there is ants surrounding one of the queens.  

I have been know to exaggerate.  Some may call it dramatic.  So, I took just a few pictures from the last day to illustrate that I am not, in fact. exaggerating.  Even Gary, my leveled-headed better half, will rant if you bring this particular subject up.

This is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.  I get all kinds of twitchy even looking at this picture.  They gnawed a hole in the spout of the olive oil, when I poured some out while cooking yesterday, dead ants began to pour out in huge black chunks.  Barf.

We have another game plan to try to annihilate them.  Krulls are now on the offensive.  How is it, that ants are our biggest struggle in Haiti**? 

**(okay, maybe that's an exaggeration I can admit to, but it's at least on the top five list)