And they all go marching, down in the under ground.

Tragically, the "under ground" is my kitchen. Specifically, the cabinet just south of the microwave.

I hate ants. I couldn't hate them more if they marched around my kitchen with tiny little Bush/Cheney '04 signs stuck to their butts. Well, possibly a tiny bit more, but the difference would be negligible. That's how much I hate them. I hate them like I hate that I, English teacher, had to look up how to spell "negligible" because it just didn't look right. Every spring I must do battle with sugar ants who invade my tiny home and tromp their horrible, wee feet around in my raisin stash.

I am a vegetarian. I buy plastic shoes and eschew (as opposed to just plain chew) meat and gently escort spiders outside rather than kill them if they're just too big and hairy-legged to share my space, and I feed a pair of hungry guest cats out my back door, and doesn't nature owe me just this one tiny dispensation of NOT BEING INVADED BY ANTS? Come on!

So, critter-loving, tree-hugging, no-kill goodie that I am, I mash those tiny ant bodies bare-fingered if I must. Spring sees me turn from Buddhist to Bad-Ass as I open that cabinet door to be greeted by a mad scurry of tiny, brown, antennae'd horrors. Now I'm on the hunt. I buy fistfuls of bait traps, giant cans of aerosol-propelled death, and I wade in. Windex? I scoff at such wimpy weapons. Leave your boy scout troops at home; I'm bringing in the Big Boys. If it hasn't got a skull and crossbones on the label, I don't want it.

Just went into my kitchen to find only one ant, and he was coughing up blood. First round to me.