A few months back, I bought some Kaboom bathroom cleaner. And yowzers. The smell. It’s nice from about a half mile away, but using the stuff up close is suffocating. So after using it once, I decided it just wasn’t going to work out between us. I didn’t want to throw away a nearly full bottle of the stuff right after I had bought it, so I put it in the garage to waste away. It reminded me of one time in college when my roommate and I were cleaning up after dinner. Both of us had disliked the meal but there was a sizable portion of leftovers to deal with. We felt bad throwing away perfectly good food, but neither of us wanted to eat it again. We stared at the leftovers for several seconds until my roommate said, “Let’s just put it in the fridge until it goes bad. Then we won’t feel guilty throwing it away.” And that’s exactly what we did. |
Spring has finally found its way to Oregon. And with spring comes one of our home’s annual traditions. It’s not a family tradition, mind you, it’s a home tradition. Our house established it before we were in the picture. In fact, it was our house’s welcome gift to Gary and me when we first moved in. And now we have to celebrate it every spring. Ants in the mailbox!
This year, it was the nursery wing of the ant colony, so it made me feel a little heartless when I put an ant poison thing into the mailbox. But you know, Henrie family policy. I also put the poison sticks at the base of the mailbox, where the ants were coming from.
But here’s the rub. The poison is the kind they take back to the colony to share with all their friends and colleagues. And it takes a few weeks to really get the job done. So after another day of having our letters drenched in ants, I realized I needed to use something with more of an immediate effect. I hunted around our garage for Raid or any kind of instant insect killer. I found nothing. What I did find was my bottle of Kaboom. “Hey hey,” I thought. “DEATH BY SMELL!”
I took the bathroom cleaner outside and sprayed a tiny bit in the upper back corner of the mailbox, away from all the ants (just to see if I could get rid of them without killing them), and shut the door. I checked it a few hours later and walah! It worked brilliantly! There were a few dozen dead ants, but the majority of them had apparently escaped the gas chamber. I cleaned the mailbox out with plenty of Kaboom, and—here’s the best part—they didn’t come back for weeks. I like to think that when the ants were fleeing for their lives, they left don’t-come-back-here pheromone trails. Now I just spray Kaboom around our mailbox every week and the ants stay in the dirt below. Everyone’s happy.
I took the bathroom cleaner outside and sprayed a tiny bit in the upper back corner of the mailbox, away from all the ants (just to see if I could get rid of them without killing them), and shut the door. I checked it a few hours later and walah! It worked brilliantly! There were a few dozen dead ants, but the majority of them had apparently escaped the gas chamber. I cleaned the mailbox out with plenty of Kaboom, and—here’s the best part—they didn’t come back for weeks. I like to think that when the ants were fleeing for their lives, they left don’t-come-back-here pheromone trails. Now I just spray Kaboom around our mailbox every week and the ants stay in the dirt below. Everyone’s happy.