INVASION OF THE ANTS

I declared today to be a COVID-free zone.  The sun is shining, it's Sunday so there are no provincial updates to watch, and spring is well on the way.  So it was off to the garden to fill up my bucket with some weeds, iTunes playing, thoughts firmly admonished to stay away from anything Corona unless it was served with a lime.   I was happily emptying my bucket into the wilderness next door when lo and behold, I found this teeming, seething, African-sized anthill!   What a beauty it was and there were so many ants that I could literally hear their little feet as they marched around and smashed up and over each other.  Which did creep me out a bit. Zero social distancing there.  All I could think about was to shoot some video and make a little ant movie to share with my grandsons, so, being as careful as I could, I took a couple of videos from different angles.  I mean really, what kid isn't interested in anthills.   And it was kind of thrilling to see an organized society that for sure was not worried about a pandemic.

I was happily replaying the movies and trying to decide which was the best of the lot when I felt a funny little tickle on my neck.  I absentmindedly flicked at it and sure enough... one of the ant SWAT team that had been dispatched to ask me while I was hovering over their country shooting illegal footage.   And then, I felt another tickle on my ankle.  Eww.  Not nice.  Squashed it.  And then, OMG, OMG OMG there was something moving in a place that it shouldn't be.   I had, undeniably, ANTS IN MY PANTS.

Thank God Rick wasn't home to witness the frenetic jerking, slapping and pig-like squeals as I rushed to the shower.  An ant strip dance unlike any other.   I did not find any more of them - perhaps they abandoned ship as soon as they sensed they were hanging onto a deadly missile.  All clothes went into the wash immediately, and a post-shower tentative examination of the smoking pathway I left behind only revealed a couple of casualties.  I could feel my cortisol level dropping as my pulse slowed to under 100.

And I did not, for a single moment, think about Covid.