Ants ate the Garage

It’s amazing how quickly a “little” project can turn into something monstrous, like Teacher’s plan to finish painting the garage.

Last summer Teacher spent countless hours painting the house, and managed to paint the two sides of the garage that are in the play yard too. Of course my dad was a huge help, and I helped too, but neither of us worked as hard as Teacher did.

Toward the end of this summer Teacher and Dad planned to finish painting the garage. We all figured it would be a relatively quick job, compared to painting the whole house last summer.

We were wrong. So very, very wrong.

Before starting to paint Teacher and Dad had to fix a couple of holes in the siding right above the door.We thought they were water damage and would be as quick and easy to fix as the damaged boards on the house. Once Teacher and Dad started working they realized that the holes were just the tip of the iceberg.

 

The top two holes are the only hint we had of the horror that was hiding inside the walls.

 

We were totally not expecting anything like this.

 

Oh yeah, this is bad.

 

Teacher continues exploring. Every time he pulls another piece of the garage off we hope we’ll find whole, untouched boards.

 

But so far all he finds is more destruction.

 

My dad is working on the other end of the garage, trying to determine how bad the damage is on that side.

 

He’s not having any more luck than Teacher.

 

The garage is being peeled apart layer by layer, like a huge ant-infested onion.

 

How many ants were living in there, anyway?

Never mind, I don’t want to know.

 

There are times I miss the days we rented… this is one of them.

 

Well, the upper corner looks OK… I’m trying to find the silver lining, but it’s not working.

 

I think Teacher’s finally reached undamaged wood. Hooray!

 

Yes, this ant is squished. Yes, I squished him myself. Yes, I enjoyed it. For the record, I don’t care what PETA thinks – those ants invaded my home and deserve to die!

 

Whenever Teacher or Dad would pull down a new section of wood the ants would come swarming out. There were so many ants falling to the ground it was like a horror movie; Teacher and Dad had to jump back so they wouldn’t be covered with ants. Ewwwww!

 

I stood by with ant spray and got those suckers as quickly as I could. The ones I missed with the spray I hunted down and stomped on – it was a personal vendetta.

 

We had a bunch of these huge, winged ants too; I really enjoyed squashing them so they couldn’t fly away and start a new ant colony in someone else’s garage.

Die, ants, die!

 

The tunnels are amazing, but I’d appreciate them more if they were displayed in a zoo exhibit instead of our garage.

 

It’s shocking that such a small creature can cause so much damage.

 

Our poor, poor garage.

On the bright side, there’s no-where to go but up, right?

 

Before quitting for the day Teacher and Dad wanted to protect the wood in case it rained. Can you guess what they’re using?

 

It’s a roll of waxed paper left from the days my great-grandpa used to work in a frozen vegetable factory! If you’ve ever bought frozen, chopped spinach in a box, this is the same kind of paper that’s on the outside.

 

Except it wasn’t spinach…

 

Chopped turnip greens – seriously?! I can’t believe that at one time chopped turnip greens were so popular a vegetable that they were mass-produced.

I’ve never had a turnip green – chopped or otherwise.

Have you?

Would you ever want to?

The garage saga will be continued…
Turnip