Is It Legal to Yell ‘Ants!’ in a Crowded Car?

November 25, 2012

Fearing the ANTipathy of their neighbors, the Whites did not want to use a photo identifying their actual ant infested car. This is a file photo of ants in a car.

by Roger White

So I was chauffeuring my younger daughter home from her latest must-attend gathering of friends and frenemies du jour, daydreaming of the day when my offspring have cars and licenses and gas money of their own, when we stopped for said gas. It was evening, and as I pulled in under the station’s fluorescent-lit awning, daughter Jamie began screaming at the top of her lungs and leapt out of the car as if it were on fire.

“What? What?” I hollered.

“Ants!”

“Ants?”

Sure enough. Ants. All over my car’s dashboard, big nasty red ants were scurrying around like something out of a Stephen King novel. I shooed as many of the critters as I could out of the car, and when we got home, I investigated. I must admit, I’ve never suffered from vehicular ants, so I was flummoxed. Where did they come from? How did they get in? Are they nesting in the inner workings of my little car? What will the neighbors think?

I pictured myself driving down our street.

“There goes ol’ Roger.”

“You heard, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Bad case of car ants.”

“No. Shocking.”

I found a big, dead pile of them (ants, not neighbors) near my wiper fluid reservoir under the hood, and I thought, aha, reservoir ants. I had no idea what that meant. Then I turned my A/C vents on high, and it began raining red ants in my interior like a tiny, rusty snowstorm.

I got online to see if there were experts in car infestations, but I suppose I should have been more specific in my query. Here are some of the results I found:

• A gross little hairy arachnid called the yellow sac spider was found to be nesting in the fuel hoses of so many Mazda 6 cars, causing fuel clogs and leaks, that the car maker actually recalled more than 65,000 of them not long ago. Spokespersons said they couldn’t determine why the spiders preferred this particular model—could have been the leg room, I suppose.

• A guy driving in Rhode Island recently slammed on his brakes when a fluffy little hairball of a dog came trotting out onto the highway right in front of his car. The guy never heard the anticipated, awful thud, so he kept on driving, noting that there was no pancaked pooch in the road behind him. He drove for 11 more miles before finding the dog clinging for dear life, hanging out of his front grill. The dog was treated for a concussion—and given a jaywalking fine, I imagine.

• A woman in Connecticut wrote in that she was driving behind a car recently when she saw what looked like mice or gerbils dropping out of the tailpipe, one by one. More bizarre than that, when they hit the ground, the rodents took off running like crazy—somehow still alive. In a completely unnecessary side note, the woman said the driver of the car bore an amazing resemblance to Richard Gere.

Don’t ask me why, but this made me think of my sister, who lives in northern Montana. She said it’s common knowledge up there in the land of frozen tundra that every winter cats far and wide that are not tucked away inside a cozy home will inevitably find shelter under the hood of any available car. That’s why anybody who’s lived up there for any length of time pounds on their hood before they start their engine. This usually scares the bejeezus out of whatever is snoozing on their engine block. Otherwise, you end up with chopped cat casserole.

What all this has to do with ants in my little Korean vehicle I have no idea, but it was an adventure discovering all the different creatures that can clog one’s car. There was even one video I had to share, this from a police officer investigating an abandoned car. If you have the time and the stomach for this, aim your web browser here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UOxR4-p9-k. I’ll say one word: Roaches. OK, I’ll say three more words: Lots of them.

So, back to my ants, I e-mailed an exterminator guy who apparently has dealt with this sort of thing. He gave me what I suppose is good advice, but his sense of humor I could’ve done without. He wrote, and I’m quoting here, that “it’s hard to ANT-icipate where they come from, but you must be hypervigil-ANT. Some people think they are attracted to ANT-ifreeze or even A/C refriger-ANT or propell-ANT. That is not the case. Usually, if you ate at a drive-thru restaur-ANT, you dropped a fry or something under your seat, which is an intoxic-ANT to them.”

Funny guy. He did say to spray the tires and the garage baseboards with bug spray—and maybe even put a few bait traps under the hood. But whatever I do, he stressed, don’t bug bomb the car. The smell never, ever leaves, and it becomes “this vile, mut-ANT odor.”

I wrote back the only way I could. “That’s brilli-ANT. Pursu-ANT to your suggestions, I will undertake this regimen of repell-ANTs. I shall write you again if my car becomes infested with ANT-elopes, ANT-hrax, or eleph-ANTs.”

Everybody’s a comedian.

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Oak Hill with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.