Pancake Brain is a free weekend newsletter by award-winning and -losing writer Lauren Duca.
Hi friends,
It is with urgent multiplication the ant problem in my apartment began on Friday. If I wasn’t sure it was officially summer in Tucson on account of the 88 degree temperature on its way up to 104, or the tan lines that force me to admit that I wear running sandals, then it was the ants, marching into my living room like so many microscopic groundhogs, not seeing their shadow until I’m about to crush them dead.
It was one, then two, then three at once, two different places, then there were four and three at once after that. On the patio, a dropped bit of dinner had them swarming. My partner Becca said, “It’s because there’s food there.” My eyes darted like Winston Churchill wondering if he had enough tacks and yarn to win the next string of battles. “It is ant season,” I said, fist on the table. “We need to move toward prevention.” Becca looked at me like I was Pete Hegseth fresh off a line of coke. I gestured desperately at the patio, which, had become totally infested two summers earlier. The initial scouts were swarming as we spoke, spiraling into each other, over and around again, too fast to be crushed or captured by anything other than a gallon jug of vinegar sloshing an ocean of acidity under the table. Unless anyone has better suggestions, the next step is those liquid bait traps that kill the whole colony from the inside out, and, I while I understand that is plain and simple insect genocide, what else am I supposed to do? I’m so very sorry, but it seems like I’m going to have to murder every last one of these ants, because, I swear to God, one is crawling up my leg as I write this sentence, and another one was on my sleeve while I was editing it!
Meanwhile, Becca refuses to kill any ants. Becca is transmasculine in the sense that they would build me a commune with a working farm, if I asked for that, but they will not kill ants, cockroaches, nothing, and I think this is rude, and a violation of the policy of being the one who is strong enough to build things or know how. We have similar disagreements regarding the gendered description of their use of body lotion, but that is beyond the scope of this letter. I totally get not killing spiders, spiders are artists who create with their bodies, and they deserve respect. The last time there was a spider in my office, I whispered to her, “Hello, you’re so beautiful, I love your work, and please don’t move around too quickly when I’m near you cause that’s terrifying.” The last time there was a cockroach in our apartment, I screamed and Becca patiently escorted him outside. If it is indeed unethical to kill all of these ants, then I am going to be very busy as I begin trying to name them, to offer them Trefoils instead of TERRO ant traps, to talk with them and tell them our dreams of owning enough land for them to be free.
But seriously, what’s the best way to kill ants?
For real though,
Lauren
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