278. A knight in shining armour

 I went into town first thing in the morning (a 15-minute drive: Baby timed it) and gathered the ingredients to get rid of the nuisance my way. No nasty stuff, no harm done to anyone. The equivalent of a polite excuse me but could you just move your chair a little to the right please. When I got home I got to work. I gently poured some white vinegar down the cracks and followed by a few drops of essential oil (pepper mint, 8 Euros the tiny bottle). Baby watched me with disbelief.

'Do you want me to spray some nasty smelly chemicals in your bedroom and make the poor creatures suffer a terrible death?'

Baby knew when to keep quiet. She was perched on the top bunk, as far away from the window as possible, tucked in the corner, leaning on the wall hugging her cuddly toy.

'You're not acting like a 16-year-old right now. I hope you are aware of that.'

Pleased with my acting so promptly and so efficiently and so responsibly I told her to get dressed so we could start holidaying. She did the teenage thing of raising her eyes to the ceiling. I ignored it.  After all I was on holiday too.

...

Later on in the evening we were all relaxing under the lime tree, sipping apéritif in expectation of one of my husband's BBQ's when we heard that scream again.

The three of us looked around as if to make sure that the scream was coming from Baby and that as she wasn't amongst us she must be upstairs.

I sighed. An other species? Or had I failed in chasing the creepy crawlies? This time I didn't need to go upstairs, Baby was screaming and the window was opened.

'Mum! They love your stuff! They are millions of them! All around the window frame now, not just in one corner! MUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM!'

The boys looked at me then turned their attention back to the sausages. Which let me escape upstairs to check for my self. Surely she was exaggerating.

She was not. The ants/flies (couldn't work out what it was, a kind of mix of both) were everywhere! Black fuzzy trembling columns all along the bottom of the window but also up along the walls and some were even exploring the curtains! They seemed to have called their mates along to sample the pepper mint oil. I was speechless. I felt a little guilty too. Was Baby going to sleep with the ants/flies in her bedroom for a second night? 

'Don't worry! I'll fix it!'

Baby looked at me disapprovingly. Yeah, right, she seemed to think. Heard it all before.

But I remembered Muddy-Boots years back having less sentiments towards annoying little creatures and pouring a pan of boiling water over an ants nest on the patio at home. It had worked. Anyway I could not think of any thing else. A cat? Did cat chase flies/ants? Coffee? Did they hate coffee? Thinking of myself as some kind of medieval knight I walked ceremoniously up the stairs with a pan of boiling water and ... poured it all over the cracks all around the window frame, even along the skirting boards. I shivered as I was doing under Baby's surveillance. The ants/flies panicked and started crawling around the whole room. Baby screamed and went back downstairs to the safety of the BBQ zone. I stared shamefully at the desolate scene I had created. I think I even spoke to them, telling them not to come back and to go to the next house 20 years away, where there was nobody. They would be happy there.

That worked. Mother had chased the animals away!