Ants

The Aggie Village apartment where Shayne and I now live was scrupulously clean when we moved in -- I would even say it's the cleanest apartment I've even moved into. Even when I was filling out the move-in inventory and I walked around the place conducting what amounted to a white glove test, I was able to find only two flaws: the vent fans in the kitchen and bathroom were coated in dust. That was all.

So what were the ants looking for? I discovered them the first night, when we sat on the floor eating our Taco Time dinner. Little black ants crawling on the living room carpet. In an empty apartment. In the middle of winter. What could they possibly want?

The thing that really mystifies me is that they seem more interested in the bathroom than the kitchen. I just now sprayed ant death in the bathroom for the third time since we moved in. Why are the ants undeterred by the corpses of their fallen comrades? And what could they possibly be looking for in the bathroom of all places? We have absolutely nothing edible in there. (Conversely, in my last place, I had a vanity just outside the bathroom where I kept my hot cocoa canisters and mixed nuts and dried fruit. The ants never found it.)

So my next order of business is to thoroughly clean the bathroom floor, a task I was putting off until I acquired, well, a mop. But really, a mop is no longer the appropriate tool for the task. I would only throw it away once it was covered in ant remains. No, this is a job for paper towels, which I will wield on my hands and knees. And I'll get to that whenever I'm done procrastinating...