He hasn’t come back. It’s Saturday today. A whole week has gone by without a word as to when he expects to come finish.
And to add a little cherry on top, a few days ago we discovered evidence of a mouse in our oven drawer. Will this ever end? I’m going to get a bag full of mouse traps and send the little varmint to his grave.
We’re in Raleigh for a few days and I’m hoping that we’ll come home to find a new backyard. Anybody wanna put odds on that?
Alright, well… I guess we’re making progress but I’m a little put out.
The landlord came out on Sunday afternoon to clean up the yard. I told him what the exterminator said but he kinda scoffed at it. I don’t get the attitude really. I mean, this is his property that has gotten overrun with pests that both make it unsafe for his tenants and is causing physical damage to his property. This was an issue he should have taken up with his previous tenants. An issue that existed in the months between their leaving and our moving in. I don’t really understand why it didn’t get taken care of while he was trying to get the property rented. And now he’s gonna give me grief about trying to make it safe and habitable for my family?
He worked for about four hours and moved some branches to the street for pickup. But there’s still so much left. He said he’ll be back but it won’t be until later next week because he’s gotta go out of town for work. I don’t have a lot of faith that he’s coming back. I really need to find some teenagers who are looking for some Summer work and get this taken care of. It’s ridiculous to have a backyard that you can’t use and a perfectly good backyard playground that my kids can’t take advantage of because of the infestation.
But inside the house we’re continually fighting the ant battle. I mean, you’d think that ants would simply go away. But no. They keep showing up. And it’s not just one or two or five or twenty. It’s hundreds. Almost every other day at this point. It’s a little better than it was. We were having hundreds a day that we’d have to kill. Now it’s down to every other day. But it does no good to try to bomb their habitat in the backyard when the place is overgrown. It’s a harboring ground.
And in the past few weeks, I’ll bet we’ve killed over two thousand ants in almost every room of the house. The kitchen. The pantry. The dishwasher. The laundry. The living room. The dining room. The bathroom. Every bedroom. Closets. The only room that hasn’t seen them is the office and the stairwell. It’s absurd, really. It’s impossible to feel at home here right now.
I’m taking to Facebook to find some help.
Let me update you on the latest… If you haven’t read Part I or Part II, please catch up and come back.
I’ll wait for you…
Okay. It’s Thursday. The day Erik was coming back to bomb the yard. But it ain’t ready. Nobody’s been out to do ANY yard work. No call to say we can’t come nothing. I called the landlord. I called Orkin. I’ve juggled everybody’s schedules trying to find a time to get this thing done. Finally heard from the landlord this afternoon. He’s getting someone to come out this weekend. So I guess that means Orkin will have to wait.
It will do almost nothing to have the yard bombed if we haven’t gotten rid of the vermin habitat. So, that’s what we’re waiting on. I wouldn’t be so upset about this if it was just cosmetic stuff, but the neglect over this property, specifically the backyard has prevented my kids from being able to go outside. We have a play set in the backyard they can’t use because there are and ticks back there and probably snakes, according to the Orkin man. And that’s not even considering the inconvenience of having to push away the bamboo just to get to the slide and swings.
All that being said, we’re waiting for the yard to get cleaned up before we can eliminate the pest population on our property. So… hopefully this weekend.
So, as I mentioned previously, we are being invaded by the thing I fear the most – ants. I had a traumatic experience with ants on a vacation in the South and I’ve never been the same. The Orkin man showed up today and painted quite a grim picture. Because the backyard had been allowed to rule itself, it grew a vine that poked its way through the siding of our house under the kitchen window and, in the words of the Orkin man, became an “ant highway.” He told us the ants were probably all inside the walls of the house at this point. And what’s more is that the overgrowth has become a haven for ticks, mice, mosquitos, ants (obviously) and possibly even snakes.
This is ridiculous. There’s a beautiful playset out back (or at least I think there is) that we’d love to be able to let the kids play on but there’s no way on earth I’m sending them back there with all the other inhabitants. The Orkin man, Erik is his name, said he’d come back as soon as the backyard was cleared and he’d bomb it and we’d have no more problems with the little vermin. I called our landlord and reminded him of his commitment to get the yard in better shape, which still hasn’t happened. And made him aware that because the yard had gotten so out of control, now the house was infested with ants and the backyard was more than an eyesore, it is now a danger to my children. This was not what we’d shaken on and I need him to make good on his word.
Erik (the Orkin man) is scheduled to arrive on Thursday morning at 7AM to bomb the place and the backyard needs to be done by then. The landlord says he’s gonna try to find somebody. Wednesday is the 4th of July so I think it’s gonna be a challenge.
A few nights ago we were getting ready to head up to bed in our new place.
For those of you new to this story… We’ve recently moved to Newport News, VA for work. We looked and looked all around to find the perfect house in the perfect location. The location is this beautiful historic neighborhood on the James River called Hilton Village. Sidewalks everywhere. Kids playing outside. A park. A playground. A fishing pier. It couldn’t be better. Our neighbors are the best anyone could dream for.
Unfortunately, the people that lived here before us didn’t carry the same amount of pride in the place as the rest of the neighbors seem to and the yard (especially the backyard) provides the most glaring evidence.
We were scheduled to move in at the first of July but the time at the church in NC had come to a close a little early so we decided to move in to the new place a couple weeks early. The landlord was supposed to get the backyard cleared out but it was still very overgrown when we got there.
Right before we were heading up to bed, I went into the kitchen to turn off the lights and check the door and on the counter under the window was a line of ants. Lord knows my fear of ants. I see one and I feel like they’re crawling all over me. For those of you with the same affliction, I apologize because I know that you’re being tormented right now as you read this. (I’m deeply sorry for subjecting you to this.)
Just days ago, on Father’s Day, I woke up to a sink and kitchen floor and drawers filled with sewage backup. Our kitchen sink had erupted with whatever didn’t make it out of the pipes the normal way. We’d gotten that remedied and now ants.
I called the company that supposedly sprayed the house before we got there and they didn’t return my call for almost three full days. I couldn’t wait that long. Kelley discovered a home remedy using white distilled vinegar that deterred them for awhile (I guess they hate the smell, too). But they quickly built up a tolerance or possible constructed microscopic face masks and kept right on with the invasion. Hundreds of them. All over the kitchen. I usually prefer to support local merchants but when they didn’t call me back the next day I called Orkin. They’ll be here tomorrow.
Concentricity 