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I saw the carpenter ants massed along the door frame as soon as I opened the utility door. Their bodies were lined up in a thick row, brown and glossy like linked M & M's. I could hear their tiny insect teeth, like miniature chainsaws, sawing away at the wood of my home. Their front legs lifted and scooped the pulpy wood into their mouths, like a mother spoon-feeding Gerber squash to her baby. I watched as they began to march down the door, their antennas sticking up like the shiny heads of pins stuck into Junior Mints. I imagined their oozing white bellies beneath the scab of their shells, like pus in a pimple. Their relentless invasion of my house was swift, like big-eyed aliens they advanced on spindly legs across the white expanse of my old painted door, a pitted moon-like surface. I ran for the Hot Shot. The first spray enveloped them in a cloud of poisonous noise, and they break-danced their way to death. They writhed in agony then curled up like miniature strips of bacon, overcooked in the microwave.
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