After Labor Day, I came home from a month-long trip to find my bathroom walls moving. I squinted, thinking it might be my hangover from drinking too much on my return flight. It wasn’t – my walls were crawling with ants.

I’ve always been a sissy around bugs. When I was little, my friends would pick up a beetle or a spider and wave it in front of me, then laugh as I shrieked and ran away. When I was in college and moved off campus, I was introduced to a daily life with roaches. It didn’t matter that I was a clean freak, because the creepy crawlers could still feast on the party favors left out by my slob roommates.

After college I moved to Taiwan, where the roaches not only crawled but flew. One of my first nights there, I suddenly woke up to a giant flying roach on my chest. I nearly packed my bags and flew home. But I stayed and after a few months, I barely blinked when I saw a roach, because in Taipei you can’t escape them; they are everywhere, even in the streets and food markets. After living in Taiwan, I moved to Honolulu where the roaches were even larger. I took comfort, however, in the thought that maybe Hawaiian roaches were at least cleaner, due to the fresh air and frequent rains, than the Taipei variety.

I haven’t seen a lot of roaches, mosquitoes or even flies, here, in San Diego, probably because it’s so dry. Since I don’t have a garden, the only ants I usually contend with are at the park or the beach. But I’m safe from them as long as I’m sitting in my beach chair and I’m wearing my extra tight swimsuit. It’s during the hottest weeks of summer when ants migrate into my apartment and everything suddenly becomes an exercise in anti-anting: like putting all my food away, not eating in the bedroom and checking under my toilet seat before sitting down. The last place I’d want ants is up my you-know-what.

I can deal with occasional bugs in the bathroom or the kitchen, but if I see one in my bedroom I panic. So when I caught a cold a few weeks ago and returned to my bedroom to a see a swarm of ants on my handkerchief, I freaked. I flung the swarming hanky into the tub and turned the shower on it, threw my sheets in the washer, and when they were dry, I checked them meticulously for any corpses, because I was damned if I was going to share my bed with little crawlies.

I’m not a violent person, but ants make me do things that would land me in jail if they weren’t bugs. The first time I saw them in my home was this summer. I just watched them for a few seconds and pondered if I should suddenly take their lives. But because most ants only live for three months or less, I figured they’ll be dead soon anyway, and so my Buddhist-like benevolence lasted only as far as their path to my sandwich or my toothbrush.

At first I started squashing them with toilet paper, but realized I was stupid to waste double-ply Charmin on them, so I switched to scrap paper and an old Gay & Lesbian Times and Instinct, careful not to use the cover side with the hot model on it. For groups of ants, I used a spray bottle of household cleaner, but I discovered that if I didn’t wipe them up right away, more ants would come to collect their remains. After I’d used up half a bottle of the cleaner, I started getting more creative, if not sadistic. When I saw them on the floor, I stepped on them with my shoes. When they were in the sink, I flicked them in, splashing water and washed them down the drain. When I saw them on the toilet seat, I flicked them in and peed on them.

In the kitchen, I found them in the microwave oven. So I turned it on, waiting to hear little snap-crackle-pops. Disturbingly, the ants were still alive after two minutes of cooking, and were running around twice as fast. I can’t help but wonder: if lots of people microwave ants and let them escape alive, will we humans eventually be threatened by nuke-resistant, super powered ants? I smashed them just in case.

When my time eventually comes, I’m going to be cremated instead of buried, so the ants won’t get me. It seems that I’ve had way too much fun over the years at their expense, and I refuse to let them have the last laugh.