Humor: The ants in my apartment are my only friends

An ode to the loneliness (and inevitable infestations) of Summer Session

Hello there, gents. I am a student taking Summer Session II, and I would like to share some of my feelings about UC Davis in the summa times.

    It’s hot.

    My classes are hard.

    I’m very lonely because I’m the only one in my apartment for these next few weeks, and it sux. It sucks so much that I had to spell it with an “x.”

    Oh, wait. I’m not really alone.

    I can’t forget about the uninvited guests crashing in my bungalow. Or should I say I cANT forget them because they’re a bunch of fecking ants.

    A few days after I arrived for Summer Session, I noticed a couple of ants out on a date in my bathroom sink. “It’s just two of them, best to leave them alone,” I told myself.

    Biggest mistake of my life.

    Those two ants must’ve told their little ant friends that my bathroom sink was the hottest date spot in Yolo County, judging by the swarm in my sink later that day. I flicked and squashed like no tomorrow, only to have them regenerate like a hydra’s heads. So, I submitted a pest control request to my apartment complex.

Like a Yankee soldier’s wife awaiting her husband at war, I stared out my window in 

longing. Longing, of course, for an exterminator.

    In addition to the ant problem, I was growing more and more lonely. I had no buddies, and I just wanted a friend. And then I had an epiphany: What if the reason my apartment complex stalled pest control was so I could realize I had friends with me all along? The ants!

    The ants had been with me through a lot at this point. Strife. Self-doubt. Heartbreak. Heck! Who’d have thought that my best friends in these trying times would be a gaggle of insects?

    Now that I am #woke, I hang out with my formican friends on the regular. Just last night we bonded over the season finale of “Mindhunter” while eating a DoorDash-ed burrito (except for Antoinette the Ant — she’s on a diet and limiting herself to one crumb-a-day). Thank God for these ants and my apartment complex’s ineptitude.

Written by: Madeline Kumagai — mskumagai@ucdavis.edu