Who Are The Real Invaders?

We did our initial inspection Tuesday with our landlord. It went much better than we expected. We were practically begging her to look at stains and marks on the walls because we've heard she can be really hard on the tenants when they move out. Most everything, though, she dismissed with a handwave and a general admonition to "just vacuum it" or "just use some Magic Eraser."

I think being a tenant who didn't complain much or make a big fuss about anything made for an easier time at the checkout. She even apologized that she had to be as hard on us as she was; if she wasn't, she claimed, her boss would come down hard on her.

What I did point out to her was that we are losing the battle against the ants in our kitchen and that is something they will want to deal with when we move out. We've kept them in check for the most part over the past few years, but just this month they came on in force and are racing us to eat whatever it is we've made. They even got into an unopened package of crackers.

Our landlord remarked that this is a frequent problem with houses on our hill. With a perfectly straight face, she said all of the houses might be built on one gigantic ant colony. That's right, this hill we live on could be one massive anthill.

I later remarked to my wife how, the last time I sprayed for ants outside, there were just as many streaming down from the roof as there were coming up from the ground. "So are they invading our home," she quipped, "or are we invading theirs'?"

Ants of my hill, the house is yours in less than a week. I am sorry for living on your turf for three years.