Summer Holidays 2010 7: The Call of the Wild

Highclere Castle

When I visited Highclere Castle, the home of the Earl of Carnarvon (yes, the descendant of the one who found King Tut’s tomb), I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a deer cross the road in front of the car. There was never any danger of hitting it, because I was on private land and not allowed to drive any faster than 10 miles per hour so I got a really good chance to look at it. Unfortunately it disappeared fairly quickly into the undergrowth or I would have taken a picture of it. Still, it was a very nice experience for someone who spends her whole life living in a city.

I love spotting animals in the wild like that. A bit later I saw a squirrel and even though it was just an ordinary grey one it was still a good sighting. However, things are a bit different when the wildlife suddenly invades your home.

The cottage in Wiltshire where I was staying is a great place. Small, but it has everything, from a fully equipped kitchen to a flat screen telly with a DVD-player and, oh great joy, this time also a (albeit slightly wonky) wi-fi connection, which saved me a lot of lugging a laptop all over the place at awkward times.

But this time I had some wildlife invading the place. Not the odd fly, wasp or spider (which can be nasty enough, but hey, you’re in the country) and not the crushed snail that had somehow managed to wedge itself between the front door and the threshold without me noticing and which made a nasty smear on the doormat, but when I came home one afternoon I discovered an army of ants marching across the kitchen floor.

My first impulse was to stamp on them but that didn’t make any real impression because for every dead one several others took its place so I decided heavier stuff was needed. Off to the landlady I went who gave me a few of those boxes that attract ants and then kill them. We put a few out on the kitchen floor and hoped that would do the trick. For good measure I stamped on a few more, making the kitchen floor look more and more like a battlefield.

I settled down on the couch with a good book and was well into it when the first flying ant made an appearance. The weather was close and there was a storm brewing and that probably brought it out, and besides, there was only one and I could easily deal with that. I simply hit it over the head with the book, making an end to that problem. It was a pity it left a smear on the cover, but as the saying goes, you can’t make a cake without breaking some eggs and I was not going to spend a night in a cottage with flying ants all over the place. I cleaned the cover of the book and settled down again.

Not five minutes later I spied a full cohort of ants marching across the floor. I swear you could hear their tiny feet stamping all over the tiles. I pondered the problem for a few seconds and then thought it would be a good idea to Hoover them up.

It was indeed a wonderful idea, however it only worked for a few minutes, until they walked out of the back of the Hoover and because I was now in the bedroom I had ants all over the floor there as well.

It was clear I needed heavier artillery than those little boxes, but I was reluctant to use the anti-bug spray. That stuff is toxic (well, it does kill ants) and I didn’t feel like spraying it around and having to sleep in the fumes.

I opened one cupboard after another with the vague idea that I might find something I could use but I got a very nasty shock when I opened a bottom cupboard and a virtual legion of ants came streaming out. That was it. Countryside or not I was not going to bed with such an amount of creepy crawlies around, so out came the bug spray. It didn’t smell too bad after all.

I’m very fond of certain types of wildlife, but not when it’s crawling around my kitchen.

Picture thanks to http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

More about Highclere Castle you can find at: http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/
If you want to rent a nice cottage in Wiltshire, go to:  http://www.rendellsfarmcottages.com/  All the ants are gone now.