The Raven's Roost

Since the first of June we've had over six inches of rain here. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this afternoon I had ants in the kitchen. UGH I hate ants. I'm still working on this some but I think I'm mostly done for now. I removed everything from the countertop where they were, found where they were swarming inside (oddly enough, on a mostly empty bottle of vegetable oil which I took outside and put in the trash), sprayed poison and then waited a while. The cats weren't interested so I haven't had to chase them away from the poison. Then I cleaned up the counter again, tossed some dishtowels and a draining mat in the laundry since they had ants in 'em, and have been trying to lock down any other food sources they might get to. Cleaned up the stovetop, wiped down around the sink really well, went ahead and hand washed a bunch of dishes and pots, you know.

Fox went ahead to Home Despot for the rest of the lumber we need for the deck and he's going to get me some of those "ant hotels." They're just bait stations but since they're enclosed I can use them around the cats. I'll put a few of those out before bed - I have no idea how long he'll be out but I think HD closes at nine.

The fucked up thing about living this far South is that you will have pests no matter how good your housekeeping is. Obviously leaving things messy and dirty will make it worse, but you can have a kitchen so clean you can eat off the floor and you'll still have bugs come in. Because it's almost the tropics and we have huge freakin' monster GMO bugs. Like shit that should be on The Twilight Zone, or the evening news. Don't even get me started on some of the spiders I've seen.

I'm going to make one more pass around the kitchen and see what's what and then probably just chill with a book. I'm on book three of The Magicians Trilogy, among other things. I tend to read two or three books at the same time.