We're still plagued by those pesky little 6-legged vultures. I would say "ants" but then Allan would make his "no uncles?" joke. Although the last time he did it, he was rebuffed by Todd correcting him, rather indignantly: "No, not A-U-N-T. Ants! A-N-T!" as if his Daddy was the biggest doofball in the world. Which can be rather accurate, but that's for another day of musing :-) The strange thing about these ants is that I can never detect a trail. Most of the time, with ant infestations, you can usually trace them back to where they came from. Just follow the trail. If you leave out an especially choice tidbit of food, the trail is thick and nicely visible. Find the nest, apply ant spray, and voila! Not these ants. They seem to appear out of nowhere, and leave no apparent trail. Even when we've left food out and dozens of ants are swarmed around, eating contentedly, that's all there is-- bunch of ants surrounding the food, and nowhere else. No incoming or outgoing trail to be detected. Stranger still is their behavior ON the food-- they just SIT there, motionless! Most swarming ants I've seen are, well, swarming. Moving. Wiggling. Picking up food and carrying it back. Showing signs of LIFE. They've also taken to appearing in the bathroom sink, no matter how much I've scrubbed it. It's bizarre.
In other animal news, today I caught my first glimpse of live snails here in the apartment complex. Usually all I run into around here are empty, crushed shells. Apparently last night rain brought them out in droves, and I spotted two of them crawling slowly across the pavement. One had almost reached its destination, but the other still had a long way to go. So I picked him up and gently moved him to the other side of the walkway, in the direction he was headed. Poor, hapless creature must've freaked out, as he retracted when I picked him up. Chalk up one less snail that got crunched underfoot today. I'm sure that when I have my own garden someday, I probably won't find snails as cute, but I still can't help feel sorry for them :-)
Tonight Allan tried out the voice recognition feature on his phone. Or, more accurately, I did. He set up an email to me, switched on the mic, and handed the phone to me. This is what I said:
I like turtles. Turtles say "ribbit"
I like dogs, too. Dogs say "arf, arf"
And seals say <insert barking seal noise here. I can't think of the appropriate letters to express the sound>
This is what was transcribed out of it:
I like turtles turtles favorite i like dogs too dont hate and he thinks
Yeah... needs a little tweaking, methinks ;-)
We had ant issues here this last summer. They were really annoying because they didn't want our food, they wanted our water. Come to find out, trying to have a house without water is pretty impossible and they kept finding Kitsu's water bowl. If they were after his food, I would have just set his food dish on a plate with water so they couldn't get to the food, but clearly that was not going to work in this situation. We also couldn't remove Kitsu's water dish unless we wanted to be inhumane. So we just spent awhile spraying all around the outside of the house and along every door and window opening. Everytime we thought we had covered everything, they found a new entrance in. However, after 4-5 battles we seemed to have won so that is good. It definitely helped us though that we could usually follow their trail to figure out where they were getting in. (And now that it has rained there is plenty of water for them outside so that has helped too.)
ReplyDeleteI love Todd correcting Allan! That is awesome!
The other day I was slicing strawberries on a cutting board, and was STILL USING IT when a couple of ants crawled up and poked their heads around, sniffing. Talk about brazen! They weren't interested in strawberries, because they didn't stick around. These are picky ants, evidently. I'm wondering if the ants in our bathroom are after the same thing as yours were-- water. And it's funny that the rain keeps them happy outside where you are, usually rain drives them *inside*. Go figure. Anyway, management called pest control, who will be here on Friday to set out bait traps. Fingers crossed!
ReplyDeleteTodd loves setting Allan straight. None are as funny as the night he yelled: "No, you're gonna be FORTY!" in the restaurant, though! ;-)
Haha! Todd is too stinkin' cute. And the iPhone transcription thingy reminded me of this post by a HILARIOUS blogger: http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/2009/07/dragonisms_28.html
ReplyDeleteI think you'll appreciate it. :)
That's hilarious! I wish he had more examples :-) And it totally reminds me of that Cingular(?) commercial where the girl was trying to send a text message via the voice-to-text feature of her phone, and it kept translating her "I had fun last night" to "I have lip fungus". Do you remember that one?
ReplyDeleteThat's hilarious! I wish he had more examples :-) And it totally reminds me of that Cingular(?) commercial where the girl was trying to send a text message via the voice-to-text feature of her phone, and it kept translating her "I had fun last night" to "I have lip fungus". Do you remember that one?
ReplyDeleteWe had ant issues here this last summer. They were really annoying because they didn't want our food, they wanted our water. Come to find out, trying to have a house without water is pretty impossible and they kept finding Kitsu's water bowl. If they were after his food, I would have just set his food dish on a plate with water so they couldn't get to the food, but clearly that was not going to work in this situation. We also couldn't remove Kitsu's water dish unless we wanted to be inhumane. So we just spent awhile spraying all around the outside of the house and along every door and window opening. Everytime we thought we had covered everything, they found a new entrance in. However, after 4-5 battles we seemed to have won so that is good. It definitely helped us though that we could usually follow their trail to figure out where they were getting in. (And now that it has rained there is plenty of water for them outside so that has helped too.)
ReplyDeleteI love Todd correcting Allan! That is awesome!