First of all the REAL story. ;-)
Before last summer during a scant few years when the ground was cold and spring was on its way, we'd get some ants in the kitchen. Briefly.
Last summer while we were in Germany at World Cup Futbol matches ants came into our house in the mud room (which is next to the kitchen) and the person who was staying in our house part of the time, and feeding our cat, put out one of those orange ant trap tins (which did nothing), but didn't move the spot where the cat was fed elsewhere.
So the ants thought they'd found a permanent food source since good ol' Monty never eats the little bits of dried food that break off and fall from his mouth while eating, thereby leaving these tidbits for the ants. Where oh, where is the dog? This never would have happened if Cody were still alive.
After that the ants sort of went away, I thought.
I'd see one or two at a time and spray them with Basic H. I really didn't want to kill them.
I won't forget the time I was in Miami Beach for a LLI cf walking with 2 friends on the boardwalk along the shore. You could tell the exact line where the insecticide spraying had ended. All of a sudden we heard crunching under foot. My pregnant friend started to scream. Cockroaches everywhere. Huge ones. These must be what they call Palmetto bugs, I thought. We walked a bit further, but the crunch was just too disconcerting. So we turned around. And saw that ants had cleared away all the carcasses we'd passed or made. That's when I really realized that ants are useful in nature.
Then I discovered that they'd set up housekeeping IN my house.
Where? In both the soil of my Jade plant that was in the corner on the counter under the kitchen windows and a small miniature violet plant. I'd forgotten to water the plants for a week or two or three and when I did, out poured a stream of ants dragging eggs with them.
After that all got dealt with I thought I was home free. I was -- for LAST year.
Now this spring a small number of ants have made their way in and again, I targeted them and thought okay, soon they'll all be gone. I remind myself that Albert Schweitzer never stepped on ants (did you read the same biography of him that I did in elementary school???) I was cleaning the counter today & picked up some old mail resting on top of the coffee machine. Why I thought that a suitable place to keep these pieces, I have no idea. Probably because the spot I usually keep things that I haven't made up my mind "keep, or throw away?" was spilling over onto the floor.
So I picked them up and looked them over for a fifth, sixth or was it the 100th time (okay, an Easter card from my step-mother -- as a reminder to write to her, a fund raiser envelope to send a donation to the hospital I work for, and, are you ready for this one? A twenty something page 4" by 8 1/4" pamphlet "Coronary artery stent thrombosis." For some reason I thought I should educate myself with this throw away sent to my dh. It's now in the trash.
Ants!!!!
On the papers. Spilling over onto my hand. (And I still feel as though they're all over me.)
Why are they up here? And there were scores of them (no really only ten or fifteen, but they were falling/crawling out from between the pages of one item.) But why here? I emptied the filter with ground beans that dh NEVER takes out until the next time he uses the machine, and thought, "Should I do the run-the-coffee maker-with-cold water-and-vinegar-to-cleanse-it routine?"
That thought was abruptly interrupted by the discovery that ants were not only under the lid of the water chamber, they'd decided to become part of the system that shows how many cups of coffee the amount of water poured in the top will make. Yes, they were all stacked up over an inch deep in the bottom of a narrow tube that fills when you pour in the water. Under the tiny red floater ball. And didn't want to come out.
Can you submerge a coffee maker in water??? I tried to only rinse the chambers and lid. Who knows if water got in by the heating element.
So would you use this coffee maker ever again?
