Susan
Go Ahead, Make My Day!
All of this happened last week, but I am only now emotionally stable enough to tell my story.
It started the afternoon of Saturday Sept. 3rd. I had noticed that one of my new adult Daytona purchases had shed Thursday night and I was just getting around to removing it. It was then that I discovered that Thelma was gone. OK, I figured, it hasn't been that long, she's a large girl and that ultramel anery coloration was easy to spot. I searched as much of the house as I could...three times, making sure I not only looked down, but up as well. No luck. I had to wait for hubby to wake up around 8:45PM before I could search our bedroom, and when I finally could, no luck there either. There were only 2 places that would be more difficult to search, my closet and my daughter's closet. Both of those have unintentionally been converted into very cluttered storage places, each with a hundred places for a snake to hide. The only potential saving grace is that those closet doors are almost always closed and the space under the doors seemed too small for a snake of Thelma's size to fit under. I continued about my usual week-end chores, only a little more slowly as I was feeling quite depressed, especially at the thought of having to tell Jarred that I had lost one of his favorite snakes.
Sunday ended up being 2011 hatchling feeding day and with over 100 of those, plus 3 loads of laundry, 3 meals for the family and searching further for Thelma, I was pretty busy. Since the next day was a holiday and I didn't have to get up to get the children off to school (and I'm off Mondays anyway), I worked late getting all the hatchlings fed. Since I do have some problem feeders, and my mice colony was kind enough to have produced some pinkies the day before, I had about 8 hatchlings scattered in the whole group that were being given the night to hopefully eat a live pinky. By the time I went to bed, I had a headache brewing but hoped the Excedrin I had taken earlier would be enough. At about 2:15 in the morning, I was up with a raging migraine so stumbled into the kitchen to take a Tylenol PM and sleep on the recliner as any position other than vertical only makes my head pound worse.
Since I was up and had a few minutes for the Tylenol PM to start to take effect, I grabbed the flashlight to make a quick search of the perimeter for Thelma. When I got to where the hatchlings are located, I noticed an ant. I dispatched it quickly, only to spot another one almost immediately. Then I saw a few more and started to think about how hubby, who used to work for Sears Pest Control, was going to be ticked off about having ants in the house now. I started to trace them back to see where they were coming from. That's when I saw the hatchlings. The bottom far left group of hatchlings, which contained 3 that I had left with a pinky, was were they were coming from. I stared to remove hatchling containers as fast as I could, checking each one to see how the hatchling was. Those that had eaten their meals were fine. However, the 3 small deli cups of the non-eaters were literally swarming with fire ants (I found that out quickly as I started to get bitten as well). Those 3 containers quickly went into the utility tub in the laundry room, and the other hatchlings in that area were already removed and safe. My next step was to try to locate something to start killing ants as the current situation could not wait.
Hubby "collects" bottles and containers of "stuff". There is no rhyme or reason to any of it and at best, it usually takes me 15 minutes to half an hour to find what I'm looking for. Therefore, I could not find ANYTHING even remotely resembling an insecticide or a pesticide. My brain, throbbing with intensified pain caused by my over-alarmed state, somehow managed to remember that stuff sprayed in a car's engine (carburetor cleaner, etc) worked extremely well at killing the wasps that loved to build their nests on the front porch. I ran into the garage, grabbed the first spray can of car "stuff" I could find and started spraying down the 3 deli cups in the utility tub. Ants started dying almost instantly. I knew those 3 hatchlings had died before I had even found the ants, but I still had that fleeting thought that the spray was not good for them, but I had no choice. Once I was satisfied those ants were dead, I moved on to the large group still milling around the hatchling racks. They also died almost as soon as that spray hit them. Spray can doing it's job, I followed the trail of ants from the hatchling rack, along the north wall of the living room, down the west wall where they disappeared into a small opening below the baseboard under the front bay window. I watched that area for awhile, but no new ants showed themselves.
My adrenalin level dropped, the diphenhydramine kicked in full-force, I did one final check of all my other snakes and finally sunk into the recliner to drift off to sleep, the cat curled in my lap (something she tends not to do with me).
By the time a awoke in the morning, hubby was home from work, had surveyed the carnage and was already mixing up some of the ultra heavy-duty insect spray he had liberated from his prior employer. He could not find an ant colony out front under the bay window (the place one would think the ants were coming from). However, he did find a huge nest all the way out on the far south side of the house near the A/C unit. The little pests had traveled inside the walls to emerge in the living room. He soaked the ant colony and we haven't seen a single ant inside or out by that nest.
It took me until later on Monday to even go into the laundry room to take a quick photo of the poor hatchlings inside their deli cups before disposing of them. Hubby reassured me that the toxins of that many ants on such small creatures killed them very quickly so they didn't suffer the horrible death I was thinking they had.
And just to let you know, hubby found Thelma this past Friday, just before going to bed in the afternoon. He spotted her tail as she slithered under my dresser, said he had a difficult time getting her out from under it, but finally did, put her in a snake bag and then inside a box before calling me at work to let me know she was no longer missing. And just last night, I found one of the 2 AWOL hatchlings...inside my bathrobe that I had thrown on the floor by the side of my bed that morning.
Thanks for listening to my horror story. I'm feeling much better now (Thelma ate a couple of hours ago) and here are the photos I took on Monday. And I simply could not bring myself to open any of those lids.
It started the afternoon of Saturday Sept. 3rd. I had noticed that one of my new adult Daytona purchases had shed Thursday night and I was just getting around to removing it. It was then that I discovered that Thelma was gone. OK, I figured, it hasn't been that long, she's a large girl and that ultramel anery coloration was easy to spot. I searched as much of the house as I could...three times, making sure I not only looked down, but up as well. No luck. I had to wait for hubby to wake up around 8:45PM before I could search our bedroom, and when I finally could, no luck there either. There were only 2 places that would be more difficult to search, my closet and my daughter's closet. Both of those have unintentionally been converted into very cluttered storage places, each with a hundred places for a snake to hide. The only potential saving grace is that those closet doors are almost always closed and the space under the doors seemed too small for a snake of Thelma's size to fit under. I continued about my usual week-end chores, only a little more slowly as I was feeling quite depressed, especially at the thought of having to tell Jarred that I had lost one of his favorite snakes.
Sunday ended up being 2011 hatchling feeding day and with over 100 of those, plus 3 loads of laundry, 3 meals for the family and searching further for Thelma, I was pretty busy. Since the next day was a holiday and I didn't have to get up to get the children off to school (and I'm off Mondays anyway), I worked late getting all the hatchlings fed. Since I do have some problem feeders, and my mice colony was kind enough to have produced some pinkies the day before, I had about 8 hatchlings scattered in the whole group that were being given the night to hopefully eat a live pinky. By the time I went to bed, I had a headache brewing but hoped the Excedrin I had taken earlier would be enough. At about 2:15 in the morning, I was up with a raging migraine so stumbled into the kitchen to take a Tylenol PM and sleep on the recliner as any position other than vertical only makes my head pound worse.
Since I was up and had a few minutes for the Tylenol PM to start to take effect, I grabbed the flashlight to make a quick search of the perimeter for Thelma. When I got to where the hatchlings are located, I noticed an ant. I dispatched it quickly, only to spot another one almost immediately. Then I saw a few more and started to think about how hubby, who used to work for Sears Pest Control, was going to be ticked off about having ants in the house now. I started to trace them back to see where they were coming from. That's when I saw the hatchlings. The bottom far left group of hatchlings, which contained 3 that I had left with a pinky, was were they were coming from. I stared to remove hatchling containers as fast as I could, checking each one to see how the hatchling was. Those that had eaten their meals were fine. However, the 3 small deli cups of the non-eaters were literally swarming with fire ants (I found that out quickly as I started to get bitten as well). Those 3 containers quickly went into the utility tub in the laundry room, and the other hatchlings in that area were already removed and safe. My next step was to try to locate something to start killing ants as the current situation could not wait.
Hubby "collects" bottles and containers of "stuff". There is no rhyme or reason to any of it and at best, it usually takes me 15 minutes to half an hour to find what I'm looking for. Therefore, I could not find ANYTHING even remotely resembling an insecticide or a pesticide. My brain, throbbing with intensified pain caused by my over-alarmed state, somehow managed to remember that stuff sprayed in a car's engine (carburetor cleaner, etc) worked extremely well at killing the wasps that loved to build their nests on the front porch. I ran into the garage, grabbed the first spray can of car "stuff" I could find and started spraying down the 3 deli cups in the utility tub. Ants started dying almost instantly. I knew those 3 hatchlings had died before I had even found the ants, but I still had that fleeting thought that the spray was not good for them, but I had no choice. Once I was satisfied those ants were dead, I moved on to the large group still milling around the hatchling racks. They also died almost as soon as that spray hit them. Spray can doing it's job, I followed the trail of ants from the hatchling rack, along the north wall of the living room, down the west wall where they disappeared into a small opening below the baseboard under the front bay window. I watched that area for awhile, but no new ants showed themselves.
My adrenalin level dropped, the diphenhydramine kicked in full-force, I did one final check of all my other snakes and finally sunk into the recliner to drift off to sleep, the cat curled in my lap (something she tends not to do with me).
By the time a awoke in the morning, hubby was home from work, had surveyed the carnage and was already mixing up some of the ultra heavy-duty insect spray he had liberated from his prior employer. He could not find an ant colony out front under the bay window (the place one would think the ants were coming from). However, he did find a huge nest all the way out on the far south side of the house near the A/C unit. The little pests had traveled inside the walls to emerge in the living room. He soaked the ant colony and we haven't seen a single ant inside or out by that nest.
It took me until later on Monday to even go into the laundry room to take a quick photo of the poor hatchlings inside their deli cups before disposing of them. Hubby reassured me that the toxins of that many ants on such small creatures killed them very quickly so they didn't suffer the horrible death I was thinking they had.
And just to let you know, hubby found Thelma this past Friday, just before going to bed in the afternoon. He spotted her tail as she slithered under my dresser, said he had a difficult time getting her out from under it, but finally did, put her in a snake bag and then inside a box before calling me at work to let me know she was no longer missing. And just last night, I found one of the 2 AWOL hatchlings...inside my bathrobe that I had thrown on the floor by the side of my bed that morning.
Thanks for listening to my horror story. I'm feeling much better now (Thelma ate a couple of hours ago) and here are the photos I took on Monday. And I simply could not bring myself to open any of those lids.
I'm glad ya'll found Thelma
