Last night, after an exhaustingly busy day,  while I was making dinner and baking zucchini bread and arbitrating fights and putting away groceries, I discovered ants in our pantry. Everywhere. Hundreds of ants were congregating for a feast of proportions that must have boggled their tiny ant minds, and I was slightly less than thrilled to be their unwilling hostess. Why is it that these minor household emergencies always happen when you are tired, busy, and cranky?

So, while I was unloading and inspecting all of the food products contained within our cupboards, I composed this terrible poem.

Ants in the Pantry, by Krista Threefoot

Ants in the pantry,
Ants in the pantry,
Oh Lordy, oh Lordy,
We’ve ants in the pantry.

Ants in the sugar,
Ants in the honey,
Ants in the (gluten-free) flour
that costs tons of money.

Ants in the crackers
That keep the kids quiet
Ants in the cookies
That cause them to riot.

I’ll spray them with Windex
and then watch them die.
When they’re back tomorrow
I’ll try not  to cry.

Ants in the pantry,
Ants in the pantry,
Oh Lordy, oh Lordy,
We’ve ants in the pantry.

I had to add this picture because whenever I think of ants, I remember my grandmother’s commentary on the movie Antz: “I hated it. All it was was a bunch of ants fornicating.”   I’m still not sure where she got that from.

And before one of my comedian readers (i.e. Dad) suggests that a little extra protein never hurt: No. Just no. The only time I ever scooped the ants out of a food product and prayed there were no survivors was when we lived in Argentina and the nearly microscopic ants indigenous to Buenos Aired got into my completely closed jar of peanut butter. (It was amazing. I was almost proud of them.) I was in peanut butter withdrawal after going without for several months and even though the stuff was made in Germany and nowhere close to being Skippy, I wasn’t wasting a particle of that viscous gold, ants or no ants.