Tea from the Celestial Teapot

Today I received in the mail a survey from the Santa Clary County Registrar of voters asking me to choose the language in which I would prefer to receive voting materials. The whole thing is eminently sensible, and I’m sure saves them a lot of money in printing costs by having a more accurate estimate of the requirements.

The last two sentences: “Our goal is to hear from all voters. This survey will continue until all voters have recorded their preference.” (Emphasis in the original)

We have an annually recurring war with a colony of ants that live under our house. We always have to be careful during the summer about leaving food out, keeping the kitchen clean, etc. And we leave out ant bait, but I suspect our ants have learned to metabolize it or something because the effects of the ant bait are minimal at best.

This morning the ants won a major victory, if only psychological.

Apparently something has died somewhere under the house or in the walls, because when we woke up this morning we discovered the ants engaged in a major operation on our kitchen floor very slowly dragging maggots they had dragged off from … somewhere. They are about the size of a grain of rice, and at first we thought that this was what they were (perhaps from the sink or dishwasher). But closer examination revealed that not only were they maggots, but they were still alive.

The source of these maggots remains a mystery but I feel certain that the supply of maggots hasn’t been exhausted, and a few days from now we’ll be deluged with massive numbers of flies.

The mop, the ant war equivalent of aerial bombardment, caused grievous losses amongst the ranks of the ants. But they will keep coming. They always do.

Update: I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords.