I wake up drowsy. I’ve always have. With the upcoming AP Exams, there’s so much to squeeze in my 24 hour day. So it’s not uncommon to feel a drowsy daze.

My alarm blares at 8 am to start my day. My morning elliptical ride is always a good wake up slap, but the sore limbs and delirious haze I’m in really does a number on me. I get whatever coffee and meal concoction I feel like cooking for the day. Then I start my work for the day.

And after days of the same drowsy trance, I look down from under my desk. What are these black little fellas?! This isn’t the first time my house has had an ant problem. But by GOLLY was this the worst I’ve had to face.

The bottom of my desk was like the beach during quarantine; strangely more crowded than ever before when it’s not supposed to be crowded at all.

When these piles of crawlies do occur, I usually just grab a broom, sweep them into my dustpan, and set them off outside. A much better place to live

BUT THEY JUST KEPT COMING BACK. They were like the weird friend that lounges in your dorm room couch; leeching off your snacks and making you regret giving away your extra set of keys. Or the Jehovah’s Witnesses that keep knocking at your door to take one of their pamphlets and you got to pretend you don’t speak English.

If these ants were paparazzi, I’d have been Harry Styles when Zayn Malik decided to take Another Direction.

I tried everything to get them away. Baking soda and sugar, soap and honey, leaving a trail of honey bunches out through my patio door. But they were still entranced by my house. I snapped one day and sprayed what I thought was an ant spraying solution all my floor. Only to find out that it was actually bleached and I had messed up my perfectly good pair of sweatpants and crocs.

After weeks of handling this myself, I told my parents the situation at dinner time. Being the little noisy lady she is, my grandma piped in with some words of wisdom.

“Try placing a lemon slice in the middle of the mess.”

Oh no no no! Food is what got me into this mess! These ants are driven animals. They’ll literally naw on anything. I’ve seen them devour a dead mosquito once and questioned if that was cannibalism.

But this is my grandma. The woman who raised six kids during the rough Vietnam War. Who takes care of every single one of her grandchildren after school. The lady who help me break into my broken locked bedroom door with just a standard kitchen knife and brute strength. She’s wise beyond her age even if she thinks Tiger Balm is the solution to things.

So I grabbed a nicely sized lemon from our garden, cut a good few slices, and placed them around the problem. I headed to bed expecting to see just a even bigger wreckage in the morning.

But they were gone! All of them! They just evacuated the scene overnight.

Turns out, that the sour scent and tang of lemons throws off the ants in disgust and they try to get as far away as possible.

After that day, my desk has been absolutely clear of ants…

Except they’ve decided “far enough” from my desk is my living room.

Ending on a lighter note, here’s a video of my mom trying a old fire method they did in Asia when there were ants.

(Warning: My mother is a trained professional with a degree in Biochemistry. Don’t try this at home yourself unless with the right safety equipment and watchful eyes.)