Between blotch and blok

Yesterday, with Moderna.

I thought last night that I'd escaped any reaction. But I slept badly, couldn't rest on my back or right side (and for once it wasn't the cat's fault), and woke with a I feel badly dehydrated kind of headache. The joint pains kicked in later, and the fever this evening. So slower than the A-Z, but jusr as debilitating. Still, all in a good cause.

In other news, Shadow needs to catch another mouse.

Will at least be clean. The bathroom cupboard contains chewed scraps of packaging and a bar of soap missing a corner. Means of ingress identified. Probably means finding the hole into the house at ground level, as I think they're climbing the pipes between the downstairs loo and the bathroom (it's the only boxed in piping and wiring in the house).

Or almost. Technically, my subjects will be dead, so that's not vivisection. On the other hand, I'll be directly responsible for their deaths.

 

I've been threatening it for ages, despite Looby Loo's squeamish reaction to the suggestions. I've caught two wee beasties. They've been in an airtight jar for over two days, climbing over a couple of strands of hair. (It's like a tiny zoo exhibit really.) They've finally expired (two days plus) and I'll be putting 'em on a slide and sticking 'em under Looby Loo's microscope. Since I needed to keep them intact, I couldn't put them out of their misery, and they are immensely hard to squash anyway. So a slow starving and/or asphyxiation was their necessary fate.

 

I'm quite looking forward to what we'll see.

 

(I suppose we ought to attempt to catch the odd cat flea, too, next time we've itchy cats.)

 

All in the name of science, right?

From Guardian Books' interview with Laura Barton:

"Here," she says, pointing at an illustration showing several mites driving cars up and down a person's leg. "This was because I got headlice. Briefly. I think it was something to do with being at college. But I put on all the cream and then I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, what about those poor creatures that I killed? That was their home."

Oddly, Monday evening, whilst exterminating the putative next generation <i>in ovum</i> and combing the current crawling passengers down the plughole, I did feel rather sorry for them all.

And I clean forgot to save an example of adult and egg to put under the microscope. Oh well, next time.

And we all know there'll be a next time.

They were back again yesterday, using a completely different route. Today all is calm, after generous applications of ant killer to further interstices in the kitchen. We await the afternoon--these ants don't seem to do mornings!

Finally got round to the second bout of hoovering up the annihilated ants in the kitchen. Most died Monday night, when I liberally squirted ant killer around the part of the skirting board from which they were emerging. I got to them before more than a very tiny number had opened their wings and flown off in search of new colony sites. Rapid reaction due to noticing the suspect pile of sawdust below said run of skirting board: these have appeared before just before a party of ants started trooping around the kitchen (to recap further... The ants tend to start appearing in numbers, well into double figures, in the kitchen in the spring. They troop up the kitchen units from their various points of ingress, help themselves to whatever they can find by way of sustenance, and then go off and tell their friends. [Very Tom and Jerry, though I've not yet seen one at the front blow a bugle! As in Pup on a Picnic.] They have in the past climbed up an outside wall and in through the slight gap around the drainage pipe from the sink, through the back of the units to the kitchen floor. Now they seem to have a route under the floor of the laundry/pantry (in fact the nest may be under the floorboards there) and through the brickwork and over the top of the skirting board. They do not come in, or over, anywhere where food or crockery is stored. It's usually raining when they arrive. Evidently, a bit like school kids, they need indoor playtime on wet days. I've attacked them from both inside the house and out with ant powder, but have never fully eradicated them. To be quite honest, finding the odd one or two in the kitchen doesn't bother me anyway. I leave them be. They leave me be.The local spider [I never kill spiders! Shelob, I just love Shelob.] population needs something to keep it occupied. More than ten or so, however, and I feel they're beginning to take liberties.) So I got to them quickly on Monday and a pile of corpses built up. I left the powder down overnight, covered with a weighted-down newspaper (in case the cats were stupid enough to sample the ant powder), and vacuumed the remains up on Tuesday morning. There's a new pile built up since then. Evidently, there's just enough powder in the interstices of the skirting board to "get" the stragglers.
I do feel rather sorry for them. I know the weather's just this week gone from summer to standard-British-summer and the previous few days of heat had probably spurred them into making their great expansionist move, but outside, even in the wet, would have been a more sensible direction. We may have one potential and unproblematic ants nest, but one's enough. (I felt very much the same about the wasp nest we had several summers ago: the lucky wasps flew in and out of the nest and the house--no problems experienced by either wasps or rest of household--and the unlucky ones left their nest and flew around the house until they died of starvation or exhaustion. We disposed of the corpses. Admittedly, a little care was required if wandering around barefoot. Eventually the wasps died or moved on. At that time, there was no great problem co-habiting. [The invasion of fleas, however, was quite another matter.])
I don't feel guilty about the formic carnage*. Would've done, once. (Wouldn't even kill moths and daddy-long-legses. And that wasn't just because I'm petrified of them.) Makes me wonder, when/if we set off in our own little colony ships what's out in the kitchen ready to swat us. Or feed us kiwi daiquiri jam (that seems to kill 'em off, but they apparently enjoy the process: is too much rum bad for ants?) And how do we know if we're aiming for the kitchen or the back garden?

* Incidentally, not a googlewhack.