Eat The Gawkers

October 5, 2016October 2, 2018 / Diane Henders / 51 Comments

So we’ve listed our house for sale.

Seasoned veterans of home-selling, feel free to poke fun at me now ‘cause I’m a complete newbie to this. And y’know what? It’s a seriously weird process.

Or it feels weird to me, anyway. It’s like having a closeup video of your proctology appointment posted on YouTube: There are some places you just never thought you’d expose to idle gawkers.

And idle gawkers they are. I seriously doubt if the visitors at our open-houses have harboured even a passing interest in buying this house; they just enjoy poking their noses into other people’s homes.

Worse, the parade of disinterested traffic makes me feel as though the house we spent so much time and sweat renovating is being judged unworthy. Or, if you will: Now that I’ve gathered the courage to bend over and submit to the public examination, nobody even cares enough to pat me on the back and say, “Nice ass; you can get dressed now.”

My confidence has been further eroded by the inevitable cleanout and disposal process. That’s an exercise in perspective, if by ‘perspective’ you mean ‘utter humiliation’.

I’m generally a thrower-outer so there’s not much to purge, but I’m getting rid of some furniture and I’ll likely jettison some of the business clothes that went out of style in my closet several years ago. Now, I realize I don’t have expensive tastes and I may not be a fashion maven…

Quit the hysterical laughter, you guys.

Okay, fine; so I’m a cheapskate and my idea of presentable attire is anything that’s clean, fits, and doesn’t have holes in it.

But there’s nothing quite so humiliating as realizing that even donation centres for the homeless wouldn’t want your castoffs. In fact, there’s a guy who panhandles on a street corner not too far from here, and his clothes are newer and nicer than most of mine.

At least there’s a silver lining to all this discomfort: Every time we have an open-house, I get four hours of writing time I wouldn’t have had if I was running around trying to do the bazillion other things on my to-do list.

It’s not a perfect solution, though. We’ve studied the best practices for showing a home, and one of them is to have soft music playing. Accordingly, we’ve found an easy-listening station that plays instrumental music.

I’ve never tried to write with music in the background before, and I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. Usually I’m connected with the characters and the action, writing feverishly with my heart pounding. But, soothed by the strains of soft music, I find myself reclining comfortably and thinking, “Ah, it’s okay; she’ll get out of this latest scrape just fine.” It’s not conducive to writing a thriller at all.

Hey, maybe that’s the problem with our open-house visitors, too – they need music with a bit more drive and urgency. Or maybe a subliminal message.

D’you think the gawkers might like a little Aerosmith?

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: You Can’t Always Get What You Want… If a person can find happiness outside of society’s traditional expectations, should they change to fit society’s ‘norms’? Click here to have your say!

Just Letting The Weird Out

September 28, 2016 / Diane Henders / 62 Comments

All my life I’ve been a weirdo-magnet: If there are weirdos anywhere in the vicinity, they’ll unerringly seek me out and attach themselves to me. (Sometimes literally – more on that later.)

I used to think it was something about my face. Some label on my forehead that was invisible to me but glowed like an irresistible beacon to anyone looking at the world through weirdo-coloured glasses.

But this week while I was contemplating a pattern of knotholes in our fence that looks exactly like an evil face, I suddenly realized that I see faces everywhere. Sometimes when I’m sitting on the john I glimpse faces in the blotchy pattern of our bathroom floor tiles. I see faces on cars. I see faces on potatoes. This may be a little, erm… weird.

Then, as I sniffed the fall air, it occurred to me that autumn smells as though summer’s been wearing its underwear just a bit too long. You know; that funky aroma when something’s not quite rotten but it’s well on the way.

You already know I’m not a big fan of autumn, but that was a pretty weird thought even for me. (I’m also bothered by the fact that I referred to autumn’s ‘irresistible scent’ in that earlier post… and now it smells like funky undies? Yikes!)

So apparently I attract weirdos because I’m one myself.

I’d like to say that revelation bothers me, but it doesn’t. Weird is far more interesting than normal. I’m fascinated by people who harmlessly travel a few steps aside of the beaten path. Mind you, the ones that don’t even know there is a beaten path worry me; so I guess I’m not overly weird, as weirdos go.

Unlike the guy who attached himself to me when I was riding the C-train many years ago…

I glanced up and thought, “Uh-oh. That guy looks weird.”

Sure enough, he gravitated directly to my seat and sat down. Then, without speaking, he gently took my hand.

I’ve got pretty good people-radar and he seemed harmless, so instead of making a scene and/or breaking his fingers I dislodged his hand and said, “No, I don’t want to hold your hand.”

He just smiled and took my hand again. Didn’t do or say anything else; just sat there smiling off into space and holding my hand like a little kid.

So I thought, “Ah, what the hell.”

I went back to my book, and we rode downtown holding hands. His stop came before mine, and I was relieved when he did let go of my hand at last. But he wasn’t finished with his ritual. Reaching over, he gave two gentle tugs on my earlobe, then grasped my hand and moved it toward his ear. I gave two gentle tugs on his earlobe in return, and then he smiled sweetly and got off the train. Never said a word.

Definitely odd, but all in all it was kind of heartwarming.

So at least I’m not the weirdest weirdo on the planet, but it’s probably a good thing I blog so I can let the weird out in small weekly doses instead of letting it build up until I accost total strangers on public transit.

Have you got any harmless-weirdo stories?

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: A Rose By Any Other Name… How important are character names in fiction? Click here to have your say!

Riding The Blue Unicorn

September 21, 2016 / Diane Henders / 49 Comments

For the past few days I’ve been riding the Blue Unicorn. No, that isn’t a kinky sex act (though it sounds like it should be); nor have I been eating funny mushrooms. I promise it’s safe to read on!

So… after an incredibly frustrating week of test-driving used cars, I decided on the Ford Escape, a common vehicle with lots of used ones available. Great.

Or so I thought.

Nope. There were lots of them available; but they’d all been driven into the ground even though their prices were still sky-high. By the end of the week I was so sick of the whole used-car fiasco that I gave up and called the dealership to buy a new one.

I told the salesman the bizarre mix of features I wanted, and there was a brief silence on the line. Then he said, “So basically, you’re looking for a unicorn.”

“Yep.”

“Let me see what I can do.”

Ten minutes later he phones me back in triumph: “I found your unicorn!”

And sure enough, he had. Better yet, it was blue! That delighted me, since I had been cynically certain it would turn out to be white like all my other vehicles.

So I dubbed it The Blue Unicorn, and it’s proudly residing in our driveway. I haven’t had it long enough to determine its personality yet, but you can usually match a vehicle’s face to its attitude.

Or maybe I’m just foolishly anthropomorphizing. (Okay, so that’s not a ‘maybe’.)

Still, don’t these car-faces speak to you?

Ford Mustang – “Get outta my way, punk!” (It even looks like it’s clenching a cigar in its teeth!)

Chevy Spark EV – “Hi, hi, hi! I’m so excited to meet you!”

Chevy Sonic – “Dude! Wanna watch me stuff an entire Big Mac in my mouth?”

Chevy Malibu – “Hey, babe, come back to my place and I’ll show you my etchings.”

Mazda 5 GS – “Whee! Happy-happy-happy day!”

Mazda CX9 – “Okay, now you’re beginning to irritate me…”

Acura NSX – *chuckles evilly*

Nissan Juke – “Dimples and buck-teeth – I’m Howdy Doody!”

Audi A4 – *groans* “Why is it so bright in here? How much did I drink last night?”

Bentley Mulsanne – “Goodness gracious, how inconvenient. I seem to have misplaced my spectacles.”

Jaguar XF – “You just got on my very… last… nerve…”

Jeep Renegade – “Aw, man! That totally sucks.”

Jeep Patriot – “Wh… What do you mean, ‘there is no Santa Claus’?”

Toyota Yaris – “Luke… I… am… your… father…”

Mitsubishi i-MiEV – “Look, I’m the cutest manga character ever!”

The Blue Unicorn’s face – Not sure yet…

I think the Blue Unicorn looks cheerful, but there’s a definite undertone of “Don’t mess with me”. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

What do these car-faces say to you?

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And speaking of subliminal messages… there’s a new discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: Have you found the secret message on the Never Say Spy covers? Click here to have your say!

No Pressure…

September 14, 2016 / Diane Henders / 30 Comments

The past week just flew by while we were on Vancouver Island! Stress levels were high, but fortunately even the things that seemed catastrophic at the time turned out okay in the end. Y’know; small details like our lawyer informing us that a few hundred thousand dollars of our cash had apparently vanished into thin air.

*takes some deep calming breaths*

It turned out our money was in a different trust account than they usually use and everything was actually fine and dandy, but I nearly had a brain aneurysm in the few hours that elapsed between receiving the email saying “Hey, we don’t have your money” and the phone call saying “It’s okay, we do have your money after all”.

Once the land purchase closed (hooray, we’re landowners!) we met with our project manager and subcontractors a couple of times for coordination, but our only real responsibility was to supply the layout for the house.

No problem, right?

You’d think that somebody who’d spent 12 years as a designer would be thrilled by the chance to design her own house. But did I mention I totally sucked at that career? Yes; yes I did. (Mention it, I mean. Well, and I sucked at it.)

But I tackled the job anyway.

For the past 18 years I’ve delighted in cursing the idiocy of the unknown person who designed our current house; but it’s a whole different story when I’m the idiot designing the house I’m planning to live in for the foreseeable future. Suddenly design flaws aren’t nearly so entertaining.

I tossed and turned at night, my brain buzzing. The crisis-point occurred around midnight the day before the plan was due, when I sprang out of bed with the sudden realization that I hadn’t included a guest room on the main floor!

Cue the trumpets of the apocalypse!

It’s amazing how the relative importance of things gets blown out of proportion when you’re sleep-deprived. Hands shaking, I fired up my CAD program and pushed walls around until I finally achieved a guest room around 1:30 AM, then crept back to bed secure in the knowledge that I had averted disaster. Probably.

Maybe.

Kinda-sorta…

The floor plans are with the builder now, but I have a squirmy sensation in my stomach every time I think about them. I’ve undoubtedly forgotten some critical thing that will haunt my nights and make me slap myself in the forehead every day for the next 20 years or so.

But I’ve still got a few days before the final sign-off to figure out what I’ve done wrong and fix it.

No pressure…

Have you ever designed your own house? How did it go? (Or is it better for me not to know?)

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: Colour-Blind? What race/ethnicity do you ‘see’ in fictional characters? Click here to have your say!

Highway Thru Hell

September 7, 2016September 7, 2016 / Diane Henders / 36 Comments

Hubby and I are on the road again in the first part of our adventure in moving to the west coast. It’s been, um… eventful. (And I’m writing this very late on Tuesday night, so please forgive any mistakes.)

Our property purchase closes this week, so we decided to come and spend some time wandering our new place and deciding where the house will go. And some brilliant person who shall remain nameless… (Hint: She has long red hair) …said, “Hey, this is a perfect opportunity to put my ’53 Chevy on the car-hauler trailer and pull it out to the Island before the roads get bad in winter!”

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

So we loaded the Chevy onto the car hauler and packed the truck with the oddments the moving companies wouldn’t take (including our giant houseplants) and set out to drive the whole shebang over multiple mountain passes to the coast, where we’d catch the ferry to Vancouver Island.

Easy-peasy, right?

Naively, we considered: Should we drive it in one day, or break it into two? Well, let’s break it into two, just to be on the safe side.

Uh-huh.

We immediately discovered, much to our chagrin, that our car-hauler is an old long-necked U-Haul type for which stabilizer bars were never made. If we exceeded 90 km/hr (55 mph), it developed an oscillation that required an instant slow-down or it threatened to fling us off the road.

Okay, fine. Two days. Not exceeding 90 km/hr. We could do this.

The first day it took us 9 hours to get to Kamloops. The second day it took us 15 hours to get from Kamloops to Qualicum Bay where we’re staying. It’s supposed to be a 13-hour trip in total from Calgary.

I took the first shift as driver. Let me just say, navigating an unstable 41-foot truck-and-trailer down hairpin curves on an 8% grade is not something I’d care to do on a regular basis. (Read NEVER AGAIN.) Particularly with a 5-foot-tall flowering hibiscus tickling the back of my neck.

After the first 3½ hours (at Golden, BC), Hubby took his turn. Of course, the road immediately became wider and flatter, and the next day even the infamous Coquihalla Highway (the location of the reality show Highway Thru Hell) only offered a few short stretches of 8.5% downgrade on nice wide sweeping turns. But it didn’t matter – by that time we were so anxious about the possibility of more hairpin turns and steep grades that we were both vibrating by the time we made it to flat ground at Hope, BC.

Then we thought we’d make the 3:10 ferry over to Vancouver Island.

And we would have, except for the traffic accident that kept us parked on the TransCanada Highway for 30 minutes… allowing THE ENTIRE MIDWAY CREW OF THE PACIFIC NATIONAL EXHIBITION to get in front of us. Which used up all the deck space not only on the 3:10 ferry, but also on the 5:20 ferry. We finally got aboard the 7:30 ferry, which, after loading, unloading, and some more driving, got us to our destination around 11 PM.

Gee, maybe next time we’ll try to do it in one day. Ya think?

But we’re finally safe and sound on the Island and looking forward to our bed tonight. Thank God we’re flying back instead of driving.

And at least I got some pretty pictures:

A train tunnel near Salmon Arm, BC, from our truck window

Mara Lake

Coming up on the Port Mann Bridge, Vancouver BC

On the Port Mann Bridge

The 5:20 ferry leaving… without us

On the ferry at last!

Let The Freak-Out Begin

August 31, 2016 / Diane Henders / 51 Comments

We did it! We got the property I mentioned last week, and we’re moving to Vancouver Island! Woohoo!

…Let the freak-out begin.

Okay, that’s not quite accurate – the freak-out is already well under way. Apparently I’m an overachiever, because I started the process as soon as we got serious about the property:

“OMG, what if we don’t get it?”
“OMG, what if we do get it?”
“OMG, somebody else is looking at it; what if they offer before us?”
“OMG, our offer is in and the seller has counter-offered but they got another offer in the mean time! Will they back out of our deal because they know our only recourse is to sue them?”
“OMG, we got it! What if we move out there and hate it?”
“OMG, what if our money somehow gets lost between our bank and the lawyer’s trust account?”
“OMG, what if there’s some freakish land use regulation we somehow failed to uncover during our (read ‘my’ – Hubby is much more easygoing about these things) obsessive due diligence and it turns out we can’t build?”
“OMG, what if we do get the house built and then the creek has a record-breaking flood that even comes over our big setback and grade elevation?”

…And on and on, all of it leading to, “OMG, we’re gonna lose everything and die homeless, penniless, and starving!”

In my saner moments (and let’s not quibble about my definition of sanity), I realize this may be a teeny exaggeration. But hey, at least if my book sales go flat there’s a promising career for me as one of those wild-eyed doomsayers waving a “World Is Ending” sign on a street corner.

I don’t mean to give the impression that I’m all gloom and tragedy – I’m actually euphoric about moving out of the city and designing my dream kitchen in my dream house. It’s just that I’ve been cursed with both a logical brain and an overactive imagination.

My logical mind wants to make sure all bases are covered, so it maps out worst-case scenarios and their corresponding safeguards and action plans. Meanwhile, my crazy imagination seizes those worst-case scenarios and spins them into all sorts of cataclysmic potential outcomes. It’s a little tiring; but on the upside, I’m rarely shocked by even the most bizarre twists of fate.

Laid-back Hubby just goes with the flow. While we were running around looking at properties and talking to realtors and planners and builders and bankers and lawyers, I turned to him, totally frazzled, and asked, “Isn’t this stressing you out?”

He just smiled and shrugged. “Nope.”

Some days I wish I could live inside his head instead of my own.

But now it’s his turn to stress out because he has to clean up and consolidate his packrat-jumble of tools and toys and ‘treasures’; while my stuff is permanently organized and ready to go at a moment’s notice. So maybe I don’t want to be him after all.

I guess as long as we’re not freaking out simultaneously, it’ll all work out. But if you ever see a wild-eyed pair waving “The World Is Ending” signs, and if the female half of the couple has long red hair, you might want to detour to the other side of the street.

Just sayin’…

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The Virtual Backyard Book Club is four months old – how are we doing, and what would you like to discuss? Click here to have your say!

Mad Cow!

August 24, 2016October 2, 2018 / Diane Henders / 54 Comments

No, I’m not referring to myself in the title of this post, even though I have been known to act like a total cow on occasion and I’m more or less permanently barking mad, especially after the past couple of highly-stressful weeks.

Here’s the reason for the madness: We’re trying to buy a new home and move to Vancouver Island. We’re in negotiations now, which is both exciting and scary!

All in all, I’ve had little time for laughter this week (although I accidentally typed ‘buy a new homo’ in the previous paragraph, so that was good for a snicker).

But since my laugh-levels were critically low I turned to my joke file for the favourites that are guaranteed to make me laugh, and here’s what generated the title for today’s post:

Remember when Mad Cow Disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) hit the Canadian news around 2003? I’ve had this video for over 13 years and I still can’t get past the 20-second mark without laughing uncontrollably:

And here’s another giggle: When I searched for the BSE link above, I had typed as far as ‘bovine s’ when the suggestion pane appeared:

Say WHAAAAT?!? I didn’t even know bovine sex clubs were a ‘thing’, let alone a big enough ‘thing’ to come up second on Google’s suggested searches. I was tempted to follow the link out of sheer prurient curiosity, but I decided against it. There are some things that just can’t be un-seen, and I suspect that link leads to many of them.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), I seem to have quite a bit of bovine-sex-related humour in my joke file. Some of these jokes are so old they’re probably new again, but you know what they say: “It’s dejà moo – the feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.”

The first one’s just a short pun:

Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, “I was artificially inseminated this morning.”

“I don’t believe you,” says Dolly.

And Daisy exclaims, “It’s true, no bull!”

And here’s a longer joke:

Amy, a city girl, marries a Texas rancher. One morning on his way out, the rancher says to Amy, “The artificial insemination man is coming over to impregnate one of our cows today. I drove in a nail above the cow’s stall so you can show him which cow it is.”

The rancher leaves for the fields. When the artificial insemination man arrives, Amy takes him down to the barn. They walk along a long row of cows and when she sees the nail, she tells him, “This is the one.”

Impressed that such an obviously citified girl would know about cattle, the man asks, “How did you know this is the cow to be bred?”

“That’s simple — by the nail over its stall,” Amy explains.

Then the man asks, “What’s the nail for?”

And she says, “I guess it’s to hang your pants on.”

And, in a similar vein, here’s why cows hate winter.

But enough about screwing cows. Instead, here’s a little video about wooing cows… with jazz. It always makes me smile!

What’s mooooved you to laughter this week?

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New discussion at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: Support Or Co-Dependency? Are Aydan and Hellhound helping or hurting each other? Click here to have your say!

What Colour Is The Sky In Your World?

August 17, 2016 / Diane Henders / 49 Comments

We’re travelling again this week, so my usual routine is off-kilter. Normally I write the draft for my posts on Monday, but Monday night rolled around and I hadn’t gotten to it yet. So I said to Hubby, “Tomorrow morning I need to write a draft first thing.”

And he replied, “Ah, leave it. You can pull it together in a few minutes tomorrow night.”

So I suggested that maybe he’d like to write today’s post for me if he thought it was such a quick and easy task.

“That’s a great idea,” says he. “Then I can tell everybody how I do all the research for every single one of your books…”

At which point we both burst out laughing and I inquired, “And what colour is the sky in your world?”

Hubby is my go-to guru for the latest weapons and network information, and my trusted sounding board for plausibility whenever I invent new technology. He’s also my first beta reader, unerringly sniffing out inconsistencies in voice and narrative. But “doing all the research” may be an ever-so-teeny-tiny exaggeration. The sky in his world is definitely a different colour than mine.

For instance, in Hubby’s fantasy world:

Garlic does not exist, and any attempt to create it or anything that resembles it is punishable by full immersion in a vat of Listerine.
There are no speed limits on any road.
Raisins are not allowed in butter tarts or cinnamon buns.
All mechanical devices are assembled using only common, currently available tools and fasteners.
The outside temperature never dips below freezing or rises above 25C/77F. Special exceptions are made for ski hills, which are permitted to maintain a temperature no lower than -5C/23F.

While in my fantasy world:

Mosquitos, ticks, and other blood-sucking, disease-bearing creatures do not exist.
Our skin is immune to sunburn and cancer.
Our bodies select whatever nutrition they need from anything we eat, and flag everything else through the system as ‘recreational calories, not to be absorbed’.
Teleporters exist: handy-dandy booths all over the world so we can instantly pop in wherever we want and go home when we’re done.
Salespeople who lie to their customers choke on their tongues and die, and go immediately and directly to hell. (No, I’m still not over my car-shopping experience; why do you ask?)
Come to think of it, that last one applies to anybody in a position of authority who lies. Gonna be a whole lotta chokin’ goin’ on…

Anyway, I’m hoping Hubby will allow me a special dispensation to exist in his world, but that might be asking too much. He may decide to prohibit me and my garlic-breath entirely, and just pop over to visit in my world instead. But as long as he’s still my Hubby, it’s all good – we’ll enjoy the sky in our own little world whatever colour it may be!

What are the rules in your fantasy world?

P.S. My internet access is sporadic today so I might be a little slower than usual responding to comments, but I’ll check in whenever I can. ‘Talk’ to you soon!

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: Found any ‘Easter Eggs’? Click here to have your say!

Trolling For Cars

August 10, 2016August 10, 2016 / Diane Henders / 91 Comments

Every twenty years or so, I subject myself to a painful and annoying ordeal. It’s that time of the vicennium again, and yes, I’m navigating the perilous waters of car shopping. So far I’ve battled ~~new car dealers~~ sharks, ~~used car salesmen~~ morays, and ~~private sellers~~ bottom-feeders.

I’ve done a ton of research and narrowed my choices down to a shortlist based on my analysis, and now I’m in the process of looking at actual cars. The research was interesting and enjoyable, but the actual car-shopping is inefficient and irritating as hell.

The problem is that any sort of pressure tactic annoys me to the point where I’ll walk away and go to a different dealership just to look at an identical car. Salespeople who know less than I do irritate me. Liars irritate me. And a large proportion of the salespeople I’ve encountered so far have been ignorant, high-pressure, liars, or some combination thereof.

I’ve only been shopping for two days, and already I’ve encountered these pieces of work:

A private seller who bought an accident-insurance write-off, fixed up the body, rolled back the odometer (there was no way that vehicle only had 39,000 kilometres on it), and had his brother the mechanic ‘certify’ it for safety. You know how you just need a shower after dealing with some guys? Yeah, that.

A salesman who asked what I’m looking for and before two words had left my mouth, turned his back on me to talk to my husband instead. No, I didn’t buy a car from him. Go figure.

A saleswoman who demanded my contact information before even letting me get near a car, despite the fact that I’d already told her I only wanted to sit in it to see if the driving position was comfortable enough to remain on my shortlist. She was quite snippy when I refused to give her my phone number and email… but not as ticked off as I was when I finally convinced her to let me sit in the car and the headrests could have qualified as torture devices at Guantanamo Bay.

A salesman who, when I told him about the other vehicles I was considering, sagely shook his head and said, “I’m not the kind of guy who’d badmouth the competition, but…” Then he proceeded to badmouth the competition, and all but patted my hand and told me to take his advice and not bother my pretty little head about such complicated things. Listen, dipshit, I know more about cars than you do. And it really pisses me off when you lie to me.

So I don’t have a new car yet. And I’m afraid to even speak the words “new car” within earshot of my good old reliable beater, just in case its feelings are hurt and it decides to break down and dump me in the middle of nowhere.

But I’m still trolling the car-sales waters. I’m not the chum they think I am.

Anybody else suffered through buying a new vehicle lately?

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New discussion at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: Sacrifice Or Selfishness? Considering what John has given up in the name of duty, is he being selfish now? Click here to have your say!

Anti-Ant

August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 / Diane Henders / 57 Comments

I was enjoying a quiet cup of tea on our back deck the other day when I felt it: The distinct sensation of six tiny feet scuttling across my skin. Sure enough, an ant had decided to traverse my mountainous foot instead of going around it like a sensible creature.

That ant achieved low-earth orbit about a second later.

I’m pretty tolerant of most critters. Snakes and spiders don’t bother me, and I’m actually quite fond of bats and salamanders. I think mice and skunks are cute, even though I refuse to let them share my abode. (But if they’re across the street at the neighbour’s house, I’ll ooh and ahh and take pictures:)

Mom and six baby skunks across the street from us – aren’t they adorable?

But ants? Nope. That’s where I draw the line.

Ants have no redeeming qualities. They bite, they eat house walls, they kill gardens, they make giant mounds in the lawn, and they multiply like crazy. Worst of all, ants are organized. And they outnumber us a million to one. That just doesn’t seem like a good ratio if they decide to band together and take over.

I thought I was being overly paranoid with that particular speculation, but even the information pages mention the fearsome prospect of being conquered by giant mutated ants and their brutal slave-driving societies. Yikes. Thanks for a whole new batch of nightmare-fodder.

And just to feed my worries, lately the ant population seems to have doubled in our yard. They’re slowly surrounding us, and I doubt their intentions are benign.

I mean, seriously. Would you trust this face?

(Photo by Steve Jurvetson used under Creative Commons license)

We’ve tried ‘green’ commercial ant-killers with no success, along with all the home remedies ever suggested: vinegar, boric acid, boiling water, cornmeal; you name it. One thing we haven’t tried is casting the colony in molten aluminum. That’s a permanent solution to the problem, but it might be a bit hard on our lawn.

They haven’t invaded our house en masse yet, so we’re maintaining an uneasy détente. Every now and then one sneaks inside and meets a prompt and messy demise; and every now and then they swarm me in my garden, doubtless hoping to return the favour. But if they ever mount a determined attack, I’m gonna up the anti-ant ante and get out the really nasty chemicals.

‘Cause the thought of being enslaved by giant mutant ants gives me the heeby-jeebies. And even heebier and jeebier… they can strip a dead gecko to bare bones in a little over 12 hours. That’s only a few thousand ants. Imagine what a million could do.

Did I mention there are approximately one million ants for every human on earth?

Well, I won’t be sleeping tonight.

What critter is your nemesis?

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: What’s up with Stemp? Click here to have your say!

Save

Author Diane Henders

Canadian thrillers with humour and heart

humour

Eat The Gawkers

Just Letting The Weird Out

Riding The Blue Unicorn

No Pressure…

Highway Thru Hell

Let The Freak-Out Begin

Mad Cow!

What Colour Is The Sky In Your World?

Trolling For Cars

Anti-Ant