Nichols (historical)

... the ants play pinochle in your snout.

I should have realized something was up when, in the bathhouse, a teeny tiny ant humming the Jaws theme crawled up and over my foot. As I headed back to the camper I spied Gordon out front, in his shorts and nothing else, furiously beating on a big brown block with our enormous bread knife, This was interspersed with the occasional slap to arms, legs, chest etc.

I thought perhaps he had invented some new morning ritual to celebrate our close communion with the great outdoors. But NO. He was actually beating our loaf of bread that was COVERED in ANTS! Big ones, little ones, black ones, brown. And that was our BREAKfast so this was serious.

I left Gordon to his task (he WAS swinging a big knife around) and cautiously entered the trailer. The ants had friends who were swarming the food cupboard and a 3 foot radius around it. I quickly grabbed a flashlight in one hand and my trusty dust buster in the other and whistled a few bars of The Good Bad and the Ugly.

A half hour later we are (more or less) calmly sitting at the table eating breakfast. You think we’re going to let a few dastardly ants scare us off our ONLY loaf of Gordon’s homemade bread? HA!

We have refreshed ourselves on some important disaster preventing measures when traveling through the south and Midwest, and have added insect repellant to our shopping list.Read more