Sunday, August 24, 2008

Better Living Through Comics and Animation: The Great Suburban Ant Invasion!

On the first warm Saturday of 2006, also the first such day after moving into our house, I attempted the rather basic operation of opening all the windows. Easy, right? Not quite…

It seems that an upstairs window had no screen. But, there were several screens left to us in a backyard shed. I brought one into the house to see it if would fit. Placing it down on the kitchen floor, I was horrified to see a literal ARMY OF ANTS come streaming out of the tracks of this seemingly useful remnant of homeowners past, that was, in reality, an insects’ “Trojan Horse”.

This was not just a bunch of ants… but an actual, moving, writhing, undulating BLACK CARPET of ants that had begun to spread in all directions! There were far too many to kill by the usual means of stomping or spraying, so what’s a beleaguered guy to do?

For reasons still unknown, my mind flashed to a comic book story I read back in 1965 -- “Mickey Mouse and Pluto Battle the Giant Ants” (originally from 1950 and reprinted for my generation in MICKEY MOUSE # 102 -August, 1965), in which the titular “Giant Ants” met their fate by being sucked to their digestive doom by an equally giant anteater!.





With that bizarre image in mind, I grabbed the VACUUM CLEANER and sucked all the little BUG-gers up into the vac’s dust bag before they could reach our cabinets of food, living room, and bedroom – and quickly disposed of the bag! …Sure enough, that “comic-book solution” worked!

After the vacuuming, I liberally doused the area with Raid Ant Spray, and saw no further signs of our ant invasion. If only I’d had the presence of mind at the time, I would have loved to have delivered the following bit of “Bad Action Movie Dialogue”.

Hey, ants! See this giant vacuum cleaner! I call it LIFE!” (Joe switches on the vacuum and cleans the house of ants) “And, as you all know, LIFE SUCKS AND THEN YOU DIE!”

…And, so they did! And another suburban peril was averted.

The moral? In times of trouble, consult your comics and DVD collections! The answer’s bound to be in there SOMEWHERE!

No comments: