The first night I had officially moved into my apartment, I was boiling over with excitement. I brought bags of groceries, and was going to have my first foray in Indian cooking (with proper guidance, of course). I unpack everything, and head into my bathroom for the first time ever, only to find the floors, sink, mirror, and walls spotted with dark brownish red ants.
Whatever, I thought. No big deal. Living in New York and LA familiarized me quite well with cockroaches, and I guess I naturally have a stomach for these kind of things. Later on, I come back with some insect spray, and give the bathroom a cursory mist. No sense in getting out of control.
As a final precaution, I open up the cupboard beneath the sink and give it a quick spray. And then I see the drain — a small netted drain leading to who knows what (a small improvement over most American apartments that typically only have wood beneath the sink, that ultimately grows dank and moldy and requires constant maintenance, and eventually replacement). Seeing the many ants that are roaming around it, I tilt the spray can down and give the drain a healthy drenching.
Bad idea.
Within second, hundreds, if not thousands of ants, are fleeing for their lives, spreading across the bathroom floor like the inmates of an overpopulated prison making their big break through a newly found hole in the fence.
Now, seriously, I’m not baby when it comes to insects. Ants, spiders, roaches, multi-legged creatures — they’re all no big deal. But this? My stomach turned a bit. By the time I finished dousing the bathroom, maybe two or three thousand ants blanketed the ground. If I took a single step into the bathroom, I would have crushed fifty to one hundred ants with one foot. They were simply everywhere.
I closed the door, and boarded it up with a towel and some books, and gave up on dinner. Having squelched the excitement of a new and beautiful apartment beneath my ant-encrusted foot, I had little energy to entertain the prospect of cooking food.
Afterward, I told the apartment owner (who was also surprised to see so many ants), and went back to my hotel (I couldn’t have been happier I still had the room booked for a few more days while I settled/fumigated). A few days later, the issue was resolved, and the ants (and weird, red flies) were no more.
Well, not completely, as you can clearly see. Still, I find the occasional ant making its way around my apartment. (In fact, one was just crawled by on the curtain beside me.) And what do I do when I find one? I cripple it ever so gently, and feed it to the spider living in my shower, who I have not the heart to kill ever since I found him taking care of the ant problem of his own volition.
The above is clearly a picture of my spider friend, who is not yet named. I think I called him Wilbur once, which was almost certainly due to a lingering attachment to Charlotte’s Web. Maybe it’ll stick, despite being somewhat misplaced.
And, for the record, my first foray into Indian cooking was an absolute nightmare. I need not blame the ants, as they only delayed the inevitable.
