Hormigas Fantasmas
Hormigas Fantasmas
Our infestation of "ghost ants" requires an exorcism.
I’ve often wondered about the practical realities of ghost stories. How disruptive, really, can a ghost be? It always seems like the people being haunted live in places so huge, so fabulous, that the presence of an unwanted spectral entity would be outweighed by the fabulous beauty or antique luxury of the home that comes with said ghost. We would have gladly rented a haunted apartment in New York if it had meant gaining more space or inheriting a clutch of ornate, antique hardwood furniture. What’s that, you say? There’s a working wood-burning fireplace, but every time you use it blood starts oozing out of the walls? We’ll buy a mop.
I do now, perhaps, have a better understanding of what it means to be haunted. Having a ghost isn’t simply about being periodically scared, it’s about being perpetually irritated. The specter doesn’t need to be violent or vengeful. It doesn’t need to break things or make your loved one float in the air and speak in tongues. It just needs to be there, all the time, annoying you in small ways. A haunting is a battle of attrition: the ghost has infinite time, and you do not, so all it really needs to do is eventually wear you down.
Our struggle with hormigas fantasmas—ghost ants—is decidedly wearing us down. We’ve been pushed to the limit of what we’re able to tolerate and while we’re not going to cede defeat and move out, we have, at long last, called for an exorcism, and this week an exterminator arrived at our house.
Germain arrived about half an hour after the appointed time, which in Mexico is like arriving early. His car, a nice 4-door Fiat, was emblazoned with stick-on decals spelling out both his phone number and the word “EXTERMINADOR” and he wore a clean, well-fitting uniform marred only by a small and mysterious brown stain on the back of one shoulder, perhaps from where he leaned against an insect in another, more heavily infested location.
In tow with Germain was a man so young it might be more accurate to call him a boy, and after shaking hands with Germain I also gave el chico a friendly “mucho gusto!” He was so surprised by the greeting he seemed almost shocked, like an insect suddenly confronted by the sun when the rock it’s hiding beneath has suddenly been removed.
Everyone who comes to the house to do work receives my customary welcome/warning, in which after greeting them I apologetically say “lo siento, estoy aprendiendo hablar español” (“I’m sorry, I’m learning to speak Spanish”) but to date Germain has been the only person to respond by saying that my accent was so good he thought I was fluent. Let it be known that the key to a gringo’s heart isn’t complimenting his house, it’s telling him his rusty, broken down Spanish has native proficiency.
We weren’t sure what to make of the young, slender man with neatly combed hair. Father/son businesses are common in Oaxaca and when our builder Antonio came to work he would often bring his son-in-law, Jesus, with him, who was extremely friendly and eager to practice his English. Our cabinet maker Martín also came to work with his son, who worked both efficiently and joylessly, befitting someone who was (maybe) 18 years old and doing physical labor with his dad. Whether or not Germain’s silent apprentice is also his hijo remains to be seen, and he politely shadowed us as we walked through our house and gardens, never once saying a word.
We were curious to see how Germain would be. Bringing in a new person to do any type of work is always a little bit of a gamble, as Oaxacan tradespeople can be unpredictable. In Oaxaca (and perhaps this is true in other parts of Mexico) tradespeople charge by the job, not for their time, and as a result there’s some variability when it comes to how seriously they take the passage of time.
Some tradespeople aim for efficiency, knowing that they need to squeeze as much productivity out of the day as they can so that they can take on more jobs. Many, however, are focused on the ultimate destination and not on the length or difficulty of the trip. Those people tend to be a bit looser, showing up late (or sometimes not at all) and not seeming particularly concerned with just how quickly the sun slips beneath the horizon.
As we walked Germain and his young shadow through the house and property we described our various problems to him. We now have six types of ants on the property: hundreds (if not thousands) of tiny, ephemeral hormigas fantasmas in the kitchen, small black ants near the doors and windows, large red ants living on the roof, leafcutter ants in the garden, larger blank ants living under the concrete near the pool and up near the hortaliza (our screened-in vegetable garden), and more recently tiny, black, winged ants have begun to appear in my office.
As I wrote about in my previous Substack post, Night of the Hormigas, ants are a recurring issue for us, but the hormigas fantasmas are the real enemies. They live inside, they live outside, they live in potted plants, in clumps of deteriorating greenery. They’re in our walls, behind the cabinets, in the space behind our power sockets. Because the downstairs is reserved for guests (private, through Airbnb, and friends and family) it gets much less traffic, meaning much less food and liquid to attract the ants. But the fantasmas love the upstairs, and are our constant companions there.
Germain took all of the exposition and our questions in stride. I was worried he would want to fumigate, filling our home (and coating our stuff) in toxic fog, but he assured us the removal of the fantasmas would be done with a targeted spray applied both inside and outside of our house. The poison is extremely toxic but becomes inert after around 4 hours, giving it enough time to kill the ants but also making it safe for us (and our dogs) to return to the home after a certain amount of time. But, he cautioned, we will need to cover anything near the spray zones with plastic sheeting, a task we’re incredibly glad we have Edgar to help us with.
“Cuantos tiempos ustedes necesitan visitar?” I asked Germain.
“Tres tiempos,” he said. Once for the initial treatment, and then twice more to make sure it had worked thoroughly. And, he cautioned, the poison will kill everything, not just the ants. Spiders, scorpions, even the geckos which live in the ceiling in my office will fall victim to it.
Germain’s warning that our beautiful, colorful Mexican home would be filled with death was not entirely welcome news, and I rather like both the spiders and the geckos. I decided I could at least content myself with the fact that geckos are an invasive species in Oaxaca and only appeared on our property a couple of years ago, seemingly spurred on by climate change. Their death, while regrettable, wouldn’t harm our hyperlocal ecosystem.
We’re not quite excited for this to happen, but it’s time. We’ve put up with our ghosts for about as long as we can stand, and they recently found their way into the compost bucket I keep inside of our kitchen island underneath a very handy built-in chute with a wooden lid. And yesterday, sitting on the couch in the dark, I kept finding ants crawling on my arms and legs. Had they gotten into the couch? Had they infiltrated our clothing cabinet, now hiding in my folded pajamas? A nuisance has turned into an invasion, into paranoia.
But no more. Let Germain drive the evil out of our home, his pressurized poisons like holy water, his neat and tidy jumpsuit like the sanctified vestments of a holy man specializing in exorcisms.
