fourmis... or what I did on a Friday night

Every place I've lived where the winters are mild attract bugs (where the winters are severe, its rodents). Now that we're back on the west coast, we've been visited by weekly invasions of tiny sugar ants. Unfortunately, we're used to this and slip easily into the role of exterminators. We trap, block the entry, and then scorch the earth.

I realized we are too practiced at this when our four-year-old took a piece of masking tape and, emulating her parents, began to clean up the bugs running frantically for cover. (The smushed ants, you see, stick to the masking tape which is so much more tidy than leaving carcasses all over the floor, table, or counter.) With tape in hand, she noted, "they're easy to get when they [are confused and] stand still." Then added, "Ha! I got it!"

Now, we await Tuesday when Raymond the Exterminator (we're on a first-name basis) will come and finalize the scorching of earth. Until then, I will suffer with the feeling - from time to time - that there is an ant (a fourmi) crawling on me. Now I fully appreciate the notion I learned in France of having "les fourmi." It was a common enough phrase that my neighbors used to refer to someone who was twitchy or jumpy, someone who acted strange and could not sit still. But I am not "coo-coo" (again, their phrase, not mine), I really do have ants. I also have a large roll of masking tape. And the night is yet young.