Teresa Santoski

As the weather gets warmer, more and more of the local wildlife have been putting in appearances near our house. Most of these visitors are welcome – the deer, the rabbits, the squirrels, the porcupines, the chipmunks, even the occasional bear. But we are considerably less enthusiastic about the influx of visitors of the insect variety.

I believe I was the one who found the first ant of the year, which was scurrying through the kitchen in search of provisions for its colony. This distinction, however, pales in comparison to the experience of Younger Sister coming across an ant for the first time this year. I heard the screams from the bathroom on the second floor all the way in the kitchen on the first floor.

Although Younger Sister is now 23 years old, she still handles unexpected insects in much the same way as when she was ten. First, she screams, and then she yells for someone to come help her. She has, however, stopped trying to kill the insects by dropping a tissue on top of them and jumping up and down on it, which was messy at worst and ineffective at best.

During the years she spent living on her own for college, Younger Sister was forced to take care of her own exterminations, and as a result, she has become more effective at dealing with these situations. But now that she’s back at the family homestead with Mom, Dad, 24-year-old-Youngest Brother and me, she is very relieved to be able to call in reinforcements, like she did with the ant.

And like she did with the gnat swarm.

We get our fair share of ants, spiders and stink bugs, but the gnat swarm was rather unprecedented. We’ve certainly encountered individual gnats before, but we’ve never had to deal with a small cloud of them. It wasn’t a full biblical plague’s worth, but it was definitely a warm-up for it.

I was not present at the beginning of this event, but I have been told that it all began when Younger Sister went into the garage to get a beach chair so that she could sit outside and enjoy the nice weather.

She was somewhat distracted from this mission by the sight of said gnats flying around our closed trash cans. A number of them decided to hang out on the inside wall of the garage, right near the door that leads into the house.

Younger Sister did what any reasonable person would do: she freaked out. But because she has experienced growth and maturity in regard to handling unexpected insects, she also had the presence of mind to request back up.

She called Mom and Dad, who were out of town, and they suggested she recruit Youngest Brother for additional assistance.

No one was really sure how to handle this one. We had just done a dump run, so it wasn’t like there was enough in the trash cans to attract insects, and they were closed anyway. The gnats appeared to be attracted less to actual garbage and more to the hope of garbage.

Youngest Brother was therefore instructed to bring the trash cans out of the garage and spread them out in the driveway in hopes that the gnats would follow. In the meantime, under no circumstances were we to open the door leading from the house to the garage and risk letting the gnats inside.

Which is why, when I came on the scene, the inside of the door in question had a sign on it that read, “DO NOT OPEN. DEAD INSIDE.”

For all their puzzlement over the behavior of these gnats, Youngest Brother and Younger Sister had a solid grasp on human behavior, including their own. They knew they couldn’t rely on themselves – or anyone else in the family – to remember that we weren’t supposed to use that door, so they took appropriate precautions.

It was Younger Sister’s idea to add “DEAD INSIDE” to the sign. She felt that “DO NOT OPEN” was an insufficient warning and a reference to death might register more quickly when we inevitably found ourselves walking toward that door.

And indeed, death is what likely awaited us if we did open that door and unintentionally invite a swarm of gnats into the house. Well, Mom and Dad probably wouldn’t go that far – they haven’t killed any of us kids yet for all the shenanigans we’ve gotten into over the years, and accidental gnats would be an odd straw to break the camel’s back – but we’d certainly be footing the bill if we needed an exterminator.

Despite Youngest Brother and Younger Sister’s carefully thought-out warning sign, we did have several close calls. Boots, our cat, is the only family member who uses the front door on a regular basis – with assistance, of course – because she likes to sit on our front stoop and soak up the sun. The rest of us enter and exit the house through the garage, and it’s a tough habit to break.

After a day or two of having the trash cans in the driveway and a few incidents of family members getting locked out of the house because we forgot to leave the front door open for them, the gnats decided to leave of their own accord. Or maybe they died. We don’t really know what their lifespan is. Either way, the swarm is gone, and we haven’t encountered a gnat since.

While I’m pleased that that situation has been resolved, I did have to send another ant to meet its Maker yesterday. Thankfully, our favorite pest control specialist is coming next week to reinforce our protections against these unwelcome guests.

In the meantime, we can handle a few stragglers as long as we know when to call for reinforcements. Younger Sister might still scream, and she may not be the one who delivers the killing blow, but we can definitely rely on her to write an effective warning sign.

Tete-a-tete is published monthly. Teresa Santoski can be reached at tsantoski@gmail.com or via www.teresasantoski.com.