First Queen Moriarty sent out the scouts, quick little buggers which sprinted for a few paces and then paused, each antennae searching and sensing the smallest ort and leaving an undetectable trail for the skirmishers to follow.

“Damn,” my wife said. “We need to do a thorough cleaning around the sink and under it. Do you see them?”

“No,” I said, claiming another use of my cataract excuse and realizing that our choice of a black, marbeled stone countertop in remodeling our kitchen was a grievous mistake.

“There,” she pointed, dabbing at the spot with a wet wad of paper towel.

“I’m on it,” I said, retrieving a spray bottle of vinegar and water, followed by a swipe of bleach and a quick vacuuming of the floor around the counter, sink, and table in our breakfast nook.

The next morning there were more scouts, followed by a thin line of ant infantry, causing me to make extra trips to the sink, always armed with a wet paper towel to mop up any survivors. I made a quick mission to the local hardware store for traps, those cute little buttony things that promise to kill not only the colony but Queen Moriarty herself. My land mines may have killed some, but I saw only a single death and no more, not even after a second trip to the hardware store for another brand with another insecticide which promised to kill the queen, all bishops, rooks and pawns. It did not, which prompted a third trip to the hardware store for some artillery and more paper towels.

By artillery, I mean a two gallon concoction of poison with its own pump spray gun connected by a coiled death tube to the gallons of poison. This death spray was so powerful the directions required the wearing of rubber gloves, which prompted another trip to the hardware store, my fourth or fifth, I can’t remember because of my focus on the enemy. I followed orders to the letter, spraying outside our house along the foundation, around window sills, along doorways, the dryer vent, and any place that qualified as either a nook or cranny. When my wife was at yoga, I even took everything out from under the sink and sprayed along its edges and the circles where pipes entered.
“Take that, Queen Moriarty. You may have numbers and loyal footsoldiers, but nothing like the power of my death spray.”

The next morning we saw fewer of them, and the ones we saw pretended to be bewildered, but they still advanced into the black camouflage of our counter top. My wife, before she left for yoga class, suggested I try something natural, not really harmful, just repulsive to them. After a quick Google search and confident that anything I found out on the web had to be true because it was published and not removed or amended by any Wiki-person, I made a trip to the local Whole Foods for bay leaves, cinnamon, fine grain salt, baking soda and cayenne. I thought my ground up concoction would have frightened away anything from a bedbug to Lukas, the neighbor’s friendly collie.

“Are those tiny gas masks?” I asked my wife the next morning, trying to examine one of the latest infantrymen on my wet wad of paper towel. “I have a cataract, you know.”

“No,” she said, “your imagination is running away with you.”

“We need a secret weapon. The queen is smarter than I thought.”

No anteaters were available for rent or ownership, but being an avid fly fisherman, I remembered that I had a few patterns tied out of foam that were large ants, almost a quarter of an inch long, and beetles, which I thought might frighten even the most doughty scout. I clipped off the hooks at the bend and placed my foam sentinels at entry points on window sills and at a strategic crossroads of the counter.

This plan led only to shrieks from my wife, whom I had forgotten to let in on my latest strategy. As a result, my foam sentinels were retired from duty before I could discover their effectiveness, although I noticed one possible failure in the new arrival of a rather large carpenter ant that had been attracted to one of my rather well-done patterns and seemed to be attempting something unspeakable to the imitation.

I made another trip to the hardware store, probably the ninth or tenth, this time swallowing my manly pride and asking the associate in the pest department for advice. I told her the saga of my campaign so far. She nodded sympathetically and slightly patronizingly to each battle report and listened patiently while I explored other options. An electronic anti-bug plug-in? An anteater toy? Mirrors to confuse them? Perfume to obliterate their scent trail? Mini-snares? What about one of those battery-powered fly swatters like a tennis racket with a grid of wires that could be left on to electrocute any of the little black devils that might stray across it?

She did not comment on my failures, nor my desperate plans, but simply reached behind her to a tall canister the size of a can of tennis balls. “If the ant traps didn’t do it,” she said, “sprinkle this around all the entry points. Again wear rubber gloves and don’t inhale it.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. No one does. The formula is a carefully guarded secret. I only know that I have seen it work.”

When I checked out, I discovered to my joy that I not only had the ultimate weapon, I had achieved most-favored nation status and had been rewarded with fifty cents off my purchase. I left the store, probably my twelfth trip, cradling the canister as if it contained nitro or anti-matter. Either would do, I thought. I waited for my wife to go to yoga class, donned a mask left over from our contractors removing knob and tube wiring and disturbing lead paint, put on latex dishwashing gloves and a second layer of blue nothing-gets-through-this rubber gloves that nearly reached my elbows, and sprinkled the death-to-all-pixies-and-any-six-legged-creatures dust everywhere I thought one of Queen Moriarty’s soldiers might show up.

The next morning, it is true that the battlefield was littered with casualties, which my wife cleaned up with wet paper towels, but we saw no sign of Queen Moriarty, and by mid-afternoon several more of her henchmen had shown up, somehow having achieved immunity to my death dust.

“That’s it,” I told my wife. “We’re going to use the nuclear option.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The last time I was at the store, I noticed a box way off in the corner where you almost had to ask for it specifically. It was labeled in very small print, so small someone with a cataract had to squint to read it. It read: Bug fogger. Kills everything. You must close up the house and leave for the day.”

“No,” my wife said. “We want our grandson to visit us sometime.”

“But-”

“No, and I’m not going to yoga today. Every time I go to yoga, you run to the hardware store. You’ve sent their stock up three points in a single week.”

“But-”

“Here,” she said, handing me a fresh roll of paper towels and demonstrating how to wet a wad so it doesn’t drip but still is moist enough to sop up invaders. “You’re on guard duty.”

There I stood, mostly wiping up grains of pepper that look to one with a cataract like you-know-whats, but even worse, as I look out the kitchen window, I see a chipmunk, its flicking tail, full cheek pouches, and tiny paws as it darts out from a den it has dug under a flat flagstone at the corner of our garage. The hardware store must have something for troublesome rodents, I think, but I cannot act. I am on guard duty, and my wife is not going to yoga today. There must be something I can do.

“That’s it, you may no longer have anything to do with pest control,” my wife says as she passes, grabs my arm and makes me look at myself in the bathroom mirror. It is true. I now look like Jack Nicholson at his narrow-eyed worst. We are doomed.