My Own Personal Foreign Policy

So I'm going to begin this by apologizing for being away so long (carpal tunnel will do that to you, when you're a potential Pulitzer prizewinner such as myself). I know how much my legions of imaginary fans have been pining away in abject misery, eagerly awaiting my next screed on some trivial, completely irrelevant topic, and far be it from me to disappoint them. Therefore, today I will be addressing the topic of ants.

Not the cute, pseudo-military, hyper intelligent ants of the Tom & Jerry cartoons that always make off with an entire ham during the picnic, nor am I referring to the scary army ants that you always hear about on the Discovery Channel that can skeletonize a herd of cows in fifteen seconds flat (your mileage may vary). I'm not even talking the tiny sugar ants that sneak into your house where they disguise themselves as bits of pepper in your sweet potatoes until the very last second, at which point you are off your feed for the next several days because omigod I almost ate a bug.

No, I'm talking about brazen, arrogant, titanium-clad black ants that have been crawling around my house for the past two weeks. They show up everywhere, at any time. I'm watching the Red Sox beat the Yankees (swept the Evil Empire ... woo-hoo!) when what looked like a line drive off the bat of Mike Lowell took a sudden left across center field and down onto the top of my cable box where it flagrantly waved its antennae at me.

The thing is with these things is that they don't smush. You step on 'em, they squirm around for a little bit and then they stand up and cock their heads a la Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas" (I swear you can hear a tiny crrrick coming from what would be their necks if they had necks) and casually saunter off, flipping you the insectile version of the finger.

So I tried some chemicals. Really toxic stuff, covered with warnings and fine print that quite frankly I didn't have the time or reading glasses to look at, so for all I know it was Hershey's Syrup. Anyway, I sprayed that all around, paying extra close attention to places I thought ants may be sneaking in: window frames, cracks in the foundation, that sort of thing. Turns out I should have been paying attention to doors and my kids' bookbags, since these little buggers appears to be opportunistic freeloaders who adopt a philosophy of "why walk when you can be carried?"

Finally I reached a standoff. I found that I can kill them with a good smack, but it requires at least a 2 lb. hand sledge. So, in the interest of abating the ant problem and not causing any more damage to my drywall, I was forced to negotiate.

My demands are simple: get out of my house. The yard? All yours. Have a ball. But the house is MINE, dammit, and if I find another one of you in my Cocoa Puffs I'm going to go ballistic.

Their counteroffer was that I should leave the house, but before doing so I should buy 1,000 jars of peanut butter and leave them opened in various rooms. Further, I had to leave the Cocoa Puffs behind.

So that's where we are. A diplomatic standoff. There has been a separatist movement of daddy longlegs spiders with bad attitudes and thick accents that has stated that they would be willing to help with the ant problem provided I cede the kitchen and the space behind the toilet to them, but I refuse to negotiate with terrorists. I gotta lie down.