Creepy Crawlies

I really wanted to name this post My Husband's Next Nightmare to cleverly follow yesterday's post, but it actually happened prior to yesterday's topic, and Chad assured me that it wasn't actually a nightmare, just ridiculously disgusting. Regardless, I thought it was a funny enough story to be blogworthy.

Let me start the story by saying that there is a gas station about 2 blocks from our house that we normally refer to as the Inconvenience Store. This started many years ago when we first moved to the neighborhood and the place never seemed to be open when we needed a soda or gas. Their hours were never posted and their open/closed times were never consistent. Sometimes you'd go there at like 5 p.m. on a Saturday and the doors would be locked for no apparent reason. In recent years, they've posted their hours on the door, which has forced them to be a little more reliable, but out of habit we still call the place the Inconvenience Store. That's really not entirely relevant to the story, but I thought it was some interesting background none the less.

So on Saturday, Chad was getting ready to mow the lawn and decided that prior to doing so he needed a fountain soda (it's important to note that we do actually have tons of canned soda in the house, but my dear husband sometimes prefers a 32 ouncer out of the fountain). He went to the Inconvience Store and got his fountain Coke, sucking it down and leaving it on the counter when he was finished. As I was cleaning up the kitchen later in the morning, I opened the cup to dump the ice out before throwing it away, and when I took off the lid there were like 15 ANTS crawling around the inside. It was then I remembered that several weeks ago, Chad came home from the Inconvenience Store and told me that he had noticed a few ants on the counter top when he'd gone in for a soda. Of course he'd told the person working there about it, but clearly they hadn't remedied the problem.

Right after I discovered the ants, Chad happened to walk back into the kitchen, and he immediately noticed the strange look on my face. When he asked me what was wrong, I said, "Do you remember the problem the Inconvenience Store was having a few weeks ago?" He immediately knew what I was talking about and reluctantly took the cup from my hands and reopened the lid. When he saw those creepy crawlies I thought for a second he was going to throw up, so I reminded him that Bear Grylls has eaten way, way grosser things on the recent episodes of Man vs. Wild we've been watching (which, by the way, I've become completely hooked on--it's an amazing show!).

After Chad recovered from the initial disgust of having drank a soda full of ants, he marched straight back to the Inconvenience Store to inform them of the problem. When he showed the clerk the ants, in all seriousness the guy responded with "Oh sorry, do you want a refill?" Chad very adamantly said "NO I don't want a refill!" The guy offered a bottled soda instead, but Chad insisted that he wanted nothing else from the store--he simply wanted them to shut the soda fountain down so no one else had to eat ants!

Our theory (based on what people who've worked with fountain pop machines have told us) is that when the Inconvenience Store staff unhooked the empty syrup container from the machine they left the tube dangling, so those ants that were on the counter a few weeks ago climbed their way into the tube looking for the sugary substance. They eventually reattached the ant filled tube when the other syrup ran out, and since Chad was probably the first person to get a soda that day (since most people aren't drinking soda at 9 a.m.) all the ants in the tube probably shot out into his cup. At least we hope no other people ended up with a mouthful of creepy crawlies!