The ants go marching...into the fires of hell, I hope!

I've hated ants ever since I can remember. I think they're evil. I smoosh them whenever I can. I want them all to die.

Everyone else I know is either neutral or pro-ant. That's because ants have gotten a lot of good press. Fables such as the grasshopper and the ants depict them as being hardworking, thrifty, and carefully planning for the future. In A Bug's Life, Disney invited us to cheer as the ants broke free from oppression. Every nature show on ants praises their strength and teamwork.

No one is willing to admit the truth about ants, which is that they are the creepy-crawly version of the vulture. They're nature's clean up crew. What's worse is that they have a personal vendetta against humans.

Don't believe me? Then you're just too brainwashed to deal with reality. Think for a minute. When was the last time an ant did you any good? Can't think of a time? That's because there isn't one. Now think of a time when ants caused you problems. Admit it--several instances came to mind, right? Here are some of mine:

• Ants used to invade the kitchen pantry when I was little. They would crawl up our legs and arms and bite us as we tried to clean them out.
• Ants used to invade my kindergarten classroom. My teacher made us sit on the floor despite the fact that ants were everywhere. It gave me nightmares, and I would wake up in the middle of the night absolutely sure that my bed was crawling with ants.
• One Halloween, I vowed to carefully ration my candy so that I would have candy all year long. The ants found my candy stash a couple of months later and I had to throw it all out. To this day I have a hard time believing in food storage.
• Ants crawled up one of my friends legs and began biting him in tender places. He had to immediately undress and brush them off. OK, so he was running up and down on their gigantic ant hill, but still, to bite a guy there and make him run around in circles, wildly flinging off clothes in all directions right in front of his sisters and their girlfriends? It's just not right.
• Our house was regularly invaded while we lived down in San Diego. They attacked our bedroom, our hallway, and our family room. They weren't as bright as the ants from my childhood, because they pretty much left the pantry alone. Nonetheless, streams of ants across walls and carpets are not acceptable.
  

In all honesty, I didn't start the war between ants and me. They did. That's why I feel justified in using particularly ruthless techniques against them. Just a couple weeks ago I repeatedly drove the tires of my car over a gigantic swarm of ants on the driveway, laughing demonically as I did so. I left a huge patch of smashed, red-brown ants for the wind to blow away. If only my kindergarten teacher had been there to see it.

Then I could have run over her, too.