The Plague of the Ants

You know I hang clothes outside on the twirling clothesline.

The other day I went to put on a T-shirt I pulled out of the clothes basket I had just brought in from outside, and, to my horror, there were about 25 giant ants walking around on my top. My top! I ran back outside with my top and shook it out. Some of the ants wouldn't shake out, and I had to brush them off with my hand.

You may know we've had an enormous amount of rain here in the Midwest U.S. Many areas have flooded. All the rain has increased the bug population. Gnats even made the front page of the Fairfield Ledger. It is not typical, by any means, to find ants using your clothes as their playground. In fact, it's most unusual. This never happened to me before. I can't even imagine what was in it for them. But the year of 2008 is the Year of the Bugs.

I put the top on, but the whole rest of the day it was like I had D.T.'s. I kept having the sensation of ants crawling over me. I even felt bites. My nerve endings were on end. I'm sure I was twitching, yet there were no ants to be found.

UNTIL, as in all horror movies, someone said: "Wait a minute. Stay still." (It was my daughter.) And she picked up an ant who had been walking on my neck as if he had no care in the world.

The moral of the story must be that if you feel ants crawling all over you and you can't see any, look again.