Thursday, August 2, 2012
“We Built It”
You know the Obama campaign is ruing the day their boss said “You didn't build that!” New ad from the Romney campaign continues hammering:
Ants, Part 4,923...
One of the facts of life out in the chaparral is ants. Large quantities of ants. Long-time readers may recall the epic battle we fought for years against these little bugs – a battle that we actually won about two years ago. How did we do that? One word: silicone.
That marvelous substance, in the specific form of silicone caulking, allowed us to plug even the tiniest little holes in our house. It took me about two years of tracking down ant trails, locating holes, and devising strategies for plugging them. Some holes were easy (like the cracks between cabinets and the wall); others were far more challenging (like slab cracks under the middle of a carpeted room). But in the end, I seem to have plugged them all – because starting about two years ago, we had no ants. Zero. Zip. Nada.
If you've never lived in the chaparral, that probably seems unremarkable. If you have lived in the chaparral, you'd be willing to kill for my secret (but there's no need, as I've freely blabbed it all over the Internet!).
So why am I raising the ant topic again? Well, because a few days ago we started seeing the little buggers in our kitchen again. After two years of total ant freedom, this was dismaying. So off to Jamul Hardware I went, to buy a tube of silicone caulking, and the next morning Debbie called me into the kitchen, her horrified finger stabbing in the direction of an ant trail. This one turned out to be almost trivially easy – their entry point was a teensy little crack under the baseboard, not three feet from where Debbie spotted the trail. One little squirt of silicone, and ... we're blissfully ant-free again.
I love silicone caulking!
That marvelous substance, in the specific form of silicone caulking, allowed us to plug even the tiniest little holes in our house. It took me about two years of tracking down ant trails, locating holes, and devising strategies for plugging them. Some holes were easy (like the cracks between cabinets and the wall); others were far more challenging (like slab cracks under the middle of a carpeted room). But in the end, I seem to have plugged them all – because starting about two years ago, we had no ants. Zero. Zip. Nada.
If you've never lived in the chaparral, that probably seems unremarkable. If you have lived in the chaparral, you'd be willing to kill for my secret (but there's no need, as I've freely blabbed it all over the Internet!).
So why am I raising the ant topic again? Well, because a few days ago we started seeing the little buggers in our kitchen again. After two years of total ant freedom, this was dismaying. So off to Jamul Hardware I went, to buy a tube of silicone caulking, and the next morning Debbie called me into the kitchen, her horrified finger stabbing in the direction of an ant trail. This one turned out to be almost trivially easy – their entry point was a teensy little crack under the baseboard, not three feet from where Debbie spotted the trail. One little squirt of silicone, and ... we're blissfully ant-free again.
I love silicone caulking!
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