The Inundation
It was not really the water level I was worrying about as I sat on the porch (once more half-listening to my husband pat himself on the back for having built our house 8 feet off the ground years ago) watching a record 30 inches of rain come down in one spot in less than 12 hours. No wading to the car while fighting with umbrellas and rain boots for me! No sailing sideways across I-4 while the car struggled through the river flowing down the middle of it; no peering through a windshield trying to see what the car in front of me was doing through an impenetrable sheet of water. If ever there was a perfect time to be an offsite MT this was darn sure probably it! Nope, what I was worrying about the most as I watched the yard, the path to the barn and the cow pastures disappear under a murky mud-colored covering of water were ants! Tiny critters that detest getting their teensy feet wet and who head for "high" ground every year during our Florida rainy season. Ants that I had spent most of the afternoon squashing and swatting off my computer, the monitor, the reference books on the shelf behind my desk. Ants that I was now watching march across my porch, aimed straight at my screen doors, in a wide, determined-looking swath.
Television newscasters are great at repeating (over and over and over, just in case someone out there may not have turned on the TV set in the last 72 hours or so) the list of hurricane preparedness actions people should be taking when those seasonal storms hit Florida, usually in the same sentence they use to tell us to stay off the roads. Check batteries, get gas for generators, pick up lawn furniture, stock up on canned goods, ice, and water. MTSOs send out "disaster" planning email memos chanting the mantra, "backup, make sure you have surge protectors, backup again." Occasionally we will hear newscasters talk about a snake that slithered up some steps in its search for a drier spot to sleep. They often show film footage of completely unruffled alligators ambling slowly down the middle of major highways. Sometimes we even get videos of bears up trees or deer and wild hogs in subdivision front yards. I have never had an MTSO discuss insect inundation issues, and I have never heard newscasters mention anything but mosquitoes. No one even utters the word "ants." Ants that, in Florida, have the most uncanny ability to find the most minuscule of cracks to infiltrate a home than any other insect I have ever come across. We have found them climbing out of the drain hole of the bath tub; marching down the hangers in the closet over the clothes and onto my rugs. That story about ants not liking the smell of moth balls is just that, a story. The ants at my house seem to get positively drunker than skunks on those musty-smelling things and come in even faster so they can all share in the banquet before it disappears. Nothing is more unsettling than dragging yourself, half-asleep, in the morning down the hallway to the pantry to start breakfast to find ants tippy-toeing delicately over the canned goods and infiltrating the only box of cereal that had not yet been opened! They do not really bite, are not dangerous to our health, they are just a plain old nuisance!
Sugar ants, so named by old-time Floridians because they were, most often, found infesting new bags of sugar in the pantry, are taken in stride by a lot of folks. I have watched my mother-in-law very seriously empty an entire bag of sugar into her flour sifter and carefully sift those ants out, then save that sugar for later use. I can only thank my luck stars I was not destined to live in the days of the Florida Crackers, back in the days with no air-conditioning when the beds, chairs, even bread boxes would be lifted off the floor and counter tops to be perched precariously in tin pans full of water ... supposedly the ants would not cross the water to get to the furniture. Not something practical for electronics of course, but I did, from sheer desperation, give that method a try with my bed the year we had 4 direct-hit hurricanes in less than 2 months ... all I can say is don't put all your faith in those Cracker tales. I can't think of a better to have your day go sour more quickly than waking up with ants in your hair and crawling over the pillows and sheets.
It's not like I can simply spray down the keyboard, monitor and the computer stack with pesticide and have done with it. Although I have to admit I did try that once when ants decided my keyboard and computer tower would make a dandy home. Not one of the brighter things I ever did for sure. My fingers smelled of chemicals for days and the monitor screen was ruined. It took me 2 containers of canned air to get all the dead ants out of the tower (believe me, those little critters most certainly do have a very distinctively odd "dead" smell when they are "en mass").
So far we are relatively dry (compared to neighbors up the road who were forced to evacuate and are using canoes to get to their homes.) We use the field tractor to get back and forth to the hard road and we still have power and phone lines (at least for this moment), which with luck will hold through the next 2 hurricanes that are supposed to hit us this week in some way or another. I was able to boot up and work my normal early-morning shift on time. There is, however, an odd ripple of movement across the living room floor that keeps catching the corner of my eye as I work. I am mentally willing it not to be another ant invasion, working on the theory there must be some truth in the "power of thought." I still have several hours to work today before I can stop. Then I will be dragging on my milking boots, wading out to the closest bay tree, picking whatever leaves the winds have left on it, grinding those up, mixing them with ground hot peppers and tobacco (easier said than done since none of us smoke and running to the store is not exactly an easy option). Then, according to the book I unearthed on natural gardening and organic pesticides, I will carefully scatter this concoction around the base of the monitor and computer tower. Supposedly the ants won't cross over that barrier, rather like piling garlic around your neck so the vampire won't bite ... at this point in the insect battle, and as it once again starts raining, I am willing to try almost anything!