Anticide

Our little corner of Arizona was a war zone.

Specifically, our in our house.

And the kitchen was the battlefield.

It was the Moors and Christians. The Spanish and Brittish. Losties and The Others. Jerry Seinfeld and Newman - an undeclared war that featured early morning skirmishes, a late night offensive in the garage, and chemical weapons. Many recon parties cris-crossing countertops, surveying the dishwasher, transmitting data to unseen soldiers waiting for their prime directive to start the invasion. They tried to assassinate the top military officer, who 90 minutes before executed operation "Flood the Little Bastards." And, since seeing other two-legged beings cart off the military leader to the MASH unit, they believed that said military officer was now worm food and decided that Kitchen Offensive was a go.

With the other civilian gone and the livestock sleeping the day away in what this army saw as future battlefields, they took the countertops, sink and anything stationary in the kitchen.

What they did not anticipate, however, was that the military officer was still alive, armed with a hydrogen bomb in a bottle and a cranky disposition thanks to medication he had to take to combat the affects of their midnight raid on his tootsies two nights before.

One sight of my kitchen counter sent me into Rambo-mode. I ran into the garage - the arms locker if you will - and came out Ortho a-blazin'. The ants screamed in retreat, but it was too late, they pissed off this military leader and he wasn't going to stop until every army ant, soldier ant, queen ant and piss ant was bathed in enough spray to choke a wombat. If I had half a brain I would have added pics to this post - the carnage was a sight to behold. Once the adrenaline of battle wore down I surveyed the battlefield. The counter resembled those history book pictures of post-Civil War battles. My kitchen was Antietam, and the ants were the South.

But I didn't let it stop there. I followed their retreating soldiers outside, down the wall that shares the kitchen and into a crack inside our screen room. Once I deemed that to be their command center, I layered the area with "mines" - Amdro - and followed that with some Ortho covering fire along the baseboard leading up to the mine field in case any deserters tried to flee. With these little buggers, you can never be too careful. I come from a mountain town that had red ants. If they got hold of you it'd sting for a little bit and then fade into memory. Out here, in the desert tundra, there are ants that will take your pinky tow without warning or remorse. Stand near their hill and suddenly King Kong on the Empire State Building and they're the U.S. Air Force, pecking the hell out of your legs with their death mandibles.

Maybe I wouldn't have gone nuclear on my kitchen against the ants if they hadn't tried to have me whacked like Paul Castellano Saturday night.

While shutting down irrigation, I felt a pair of stings on my foot. Because my vocabulary consists of a half dozen words and 50 forms of every curse word imagineable, I let go with a late night "cockhound" and quick-stepped it to the pool to drown any ant who thought it'd get a free ride into the house with its mandible's firmly clamped onto my hobbit-like, hairy feet. Two large, whitish welts remained and I thought that would be it. I could handle the week of itching associated with ant bites.

Then my arms started to itch. And my head. My ears. My ... um ... well, everything. I took a shower, and every part of my body turned red as if a tomato ate me whole and puked me back into the real world. Then bumps started to appear along every square inch of my skin and before I knew it my face looked like an old-style catcher's mitt and the balls of my feet were puffy balloons of flesh.

That's what landed me in the hospital Saturday night - an ant hit job. And it was a good attempt, too, Tony Soprano whacking Phil Leatardo good. It came complete with a double fainting at the triage desk, a siezure (which a I'm told was quite theatrical with clutching and rigid legs - I'm nothing if not a method actor, folks - you hear that Scorcese), a ride on a gurney and a CT scan of my melon where the docs got quite the show I'm sure (I apologized to the docs for thinking about a Mexican donkey show, it just crossed my bean like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow man crossed Ray Stantz's mind). The doc was a joker too. As if I hadn't suffered enough, he prescribed allergy meds that would make my heart race and force me to to "shake the dew off the lilly" every seven-and-a-half minutes. Oh hell yeah I timed it, what the hell else was I going to do since I was up all night with a racing heart? Real funny, ya quack. I didn't need some shut-eye before work this week, anyway. I would have been better off with an examination from the "Deadwood" Doc.

So, if the Prez Jughead needs a battle tested military leader to get shit done in the Middle East, I'm sure he has my number. My war wounds and battle acumen speaks for itself.