I used to live by myself in a fantastic apartment on East Grand Avenue in Eau Claire. I lived above the nice couple who owned the house and, if memory serves me, they were originally from Canada. But this story isn’t about Canada. Or its fine ex-citizens.

The rooms in this apartment were huge – even the kitchen. The bathroom? Nice. The closet space? Insane. People, it had a deck. It was perfect ... except for one horrible, horrible thing.

Ants. And they were horrible, horrible.

Now, I’m sure you’ve all dealt with ants at some point. And most people who’ve had ant problems drone on and on about the sheer quantity of ants invading their precious living space. I won’t do that. I will just say this: There were a lot of ants in my fantastic apartment. A lot. But that was not the bad part.

I was super-freaked by the sheer variety of these ants. The diversity. Small ones. Big ones. Really big ones. Fat ones. Cute ones. Black ones. Brown ones. Reddish ones. And a certain kind of ant I only saw once or twice but will never forget because they were black like the absolute absence of joy.

I’m pretty freaked out by bugs as it is, but I was super-freaked by the sheer variety of these ants. The diversity. Small ones. Big ones. Really big ones. Fat ones. Cute ones. Black ones. Brown ones. Reddish ones. And a certain kind of ant I only saw once or twice but will never forget because they were black like the absolute absence of joy. They seemed to radiate a cold malice like the vast infinity of space.

Every breed of ant the universe has ever bred stopped by my apartment to hang out. My kitchen sink was like the friggin’ alien cantina in Star Wars. Even more strange and horrifying, they all got along pretty well. They seemed to know each other. And I’m sure they were always talking about me. Plotting. Waiting for me to fall asleep and do god knows what inside my ears and nostrils.

At first, I just tried to kill every ant I saw. I was the Ant Assassin – I struck fast, hard, and often. I made examples of the “reconnaissance ants,” leaving their lifeless, crumpled bodies near window sills and baseboards as a frightful warning to their companions. I was sending a message.

“This is what awaits you, little ants! Death! A squishy death! Wherein you die!”

This did not help. If anything, it made things worse. I think the live ants just used the dead ants for food, absorbing their memories and strength. Or maybe they reanimated their deceased friends using dark ant magick, hacking together voodoo Frankenants.

I desperately pleaded with them. I asked them why (oh, why) couldn’t they leave me alone? Why must they torment me? Why do the really fat, shiny ones love my shoes so much? But you can’t reason with an ant. They are faceless and indifferent.

It’s like being invaded by gravel.

It was time to escalate the conflict. I made my way into Eau Claire’s secretive underground pesticide scene (Menards), where a shady thug (sales associate) told me to stuff the ants’ entry points with boric acid. I asked her, “So ... what does it do?”

She said, “The tiny grains of acid rip the exoskeleton from the ants’ bodies.”

“Excellent,” I whispered. “Give me five times as much as I need.”

If my experience with the ant apartment taught me anything, it is this: I am really bad at locating ant entry points. I got home and had absolutely no clue where to put the boric acid (great band name). I stuffed up a bunch of little holes, but the ants ... they must have seen this coming. They must have built secret tunnels and nesting points. They evaded my anty ambushes with aplomb.

Once they started dropping from the ceiling like tiny, many-legged Navy Seals, I knew I had to move out. Also, my parents said I needed to get a job and start paying my own rent. So I left.

I’ve dealt with ants since then, but not like that. At most, I’ve seen maybe two different kinds of ants at once. There was something weird going on in that apartment, and it wasn’t the nice Canadians. I’m not sure what was happening, but much like Atlantis, Bigfoot, the Kennedy assassination, and Burger King Chicken Fry Rings, I will simply leave this mystery unsolved.