Do Ants Have Tongues?

Do ants have tongues?  This is a real question Joe asked me just the other day. 

Situation: my mom decided spur the moment to come visit us and so of course brought us lots of fun treats.  Like a big ol’ bag of peanut M&Ms.  So we are enjoying our treat when Joe asks me this ridiculous question.  “Do ants have tongues?” He wanted to know if ants could get into our M&M bag and “lick” the M&Ms.

The problem really isn’t whether ants have tongues or not.  Or whether they can lick.  Because really, once ants get into the candy bag brought from the States, or the $5 dollar Cheerio bag you splurged on, or the bag of Wholesome Fruit and Nuts brought to us by my dear sister-in-law Maggie just 3 weeks ago, the problem isn’t that ants might have tongues or that they might lick. 

The problem is that the ants Got In. 

The barrier of 3 layers of Ziplocs somehow failed.  The ants are IN the bag of food instead of out.  And they are crawling all over, all in between, all everywhere in that precious bag of food.

Your food is basically screwed.

And really, the bigger problem is that there are ants outside the bag in the first place.  Enough ants on your counter, running to and fro who knows where, scurrying up and down walls, into your cabinets, onto the floor, to attach themselves to any small parcel of food. 

We’ve dealt with the ants in the kitchen since we moved here.  It’s part of life in Costa Rica.  And these ants are so tiny that it is almost impossible to exterminate them because it’s hard to find their nest.  So we’ve tried our best to ignore them.

But then, suddenly, they started to multiply.  And multiply.  And it became increasingly difficult to use the ignore-them-and-they-will-go-away tactic. 

You can’t ignore them when they are advancing across your bedroom floor by the hundreds.  Or emerging out of books on your bedside table.  Or stuck like glue to your Burt’s Bees night cream on your bathroom counter.  Or marching around your yoga mat in the living room like it was the city of Jericho.

This kind of ant behavior will not be tolerated.  It is time to exterminate.

So we are calling in the professionals.  They will come tomorrow and spray both inside and outside of our house.  I have been very resistant to spraying inside because of course chemicals will be sprayed where we eat, sleep, breathe.  But enough is enough and we just can’t take it any longer.

So whether ants have tongues or not, they hopefully all will be dead by tomorrow.