Ants and a 5 Legged Pony...

So the weather is finally improving around these parts and that means ants are starting to invade our lovely apartment. So the other morning JD refused to eat his breakfast because a pile of ants were feasting on a piece of watermelon that hadn't been cleaned up the night before. While he was whining to me, my mind drifted back to a time in my life when I learned some important lessons about ants and a 5 legged pony.

I told him, "Dude, you need to suck it up and eat your breakfast! I used to eat ants in my cereal when I was younger!" He kind of looked at me like "OK, I'm listening." So I told him about the first apartment that Joel and I lived in after we were married. It was this reject basement apartment from the 70's. The owner was this nice old lady named Beverly. We had to pay our rent in cash so that she wouldn't have to report it as income - I liked her. I had to take her to the emergency room one day because she nearly cut off her thumb cutting an apple.

Anyway, she owned a shetland pony and a large garden. We were the lucky recipients of all the fun creatures that migrate towards gardens: Spiders (freak'n weird looking ones too), ants, worms, mice and more ants. I remember vacuuming one morning and I stepped on a freaky redish looking spider. I sucked it up right away.

When I was student teaching, I remember eating a lovely bowl of Corn Flakes before heading off to my school in the country (think Napolean Dynamite) when I looked down and noticed I had been eating a bowl crawling with ants! I didn't keep eating it like I told JD - I spat it out! I looked in the cereal box and sure enough, it was full of them. I looked in the cupboard, and sure enough, it was crawling with them. In fact, most of the cupboards were crawling with ants! I think I just just shut the cupboard and ran away to school - ignorance is bliss.

So as I'm writing this, I'm watching 2 ants crawling with glee on the wall in front of me. I've already killed a dozen today. Pretty soon the entire colony will come marching in - just like last year - shiver!

So you're probably wondering what lesson I learned from a 5 legged pony. I learned how to play the guitar in college (that's not the lesson). I love playing and singing with my guitar - it takes me to my happy place. I have no recollection of how I started doing this, but one day my shetland pony looked sad so I sang it a song. He seemed so happy to hear my lovely melody on the guitar - you know happily frolicking around on his 4 little legs. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, I was even amazed at how fab I was sounding when I glanced up and saw my sweet 4 legged pony had grown another leg. It took me a while to understand. Unless you've seen this phenomenon, you'd never believe it - he really had another leg that touched the ground!

Joel was fixing our car (that was held together in parts by a hanger) one afternoon. I decided to demonstrate my new trick. I sang my pony a song and he was happy......Joel laughed.

My dad still makes fun of me and my pony. Huh Dad...I know you're reading this. Have you figured out how to leave a comment yet?

So I learned that ants never travel alone and that 5 legged ponies can't be trusted.