First, the obscure and dated cultural reference (above).

“Young Frankenstein,” circa 1974. Gene Wilder as Doctor Frankenstein (pronounced FRONK-en-steen), Marty Feldman as EYE-gore … and the newly awakened monster. Wilder is despairing of the criminal’s brain he unwittingly has put into his mix-and-match creature, and is beating on its chest shouting, “Rotten! Rotten! Rotten!” And the monster (Peter Boyle) makes some growling sound and Marty Feldman says, sotto voce, to Wilder: “Ixnay on Ottenray.” Or, pig Latin for “nix on rotten.”

Maybe you had to be there …

A long and peculiar entry, I know, into today’s topic: The apparent elimination of the last of the rotten wood in the Teeny Apartment. And it took only four months.

This was the wood surrounding the bottom of the kitchen cabinet. Why anyone would use wood at ground level in an Abu Dhabi apartment, which is sure to flood a few times a year is impossible to explain. But there it was,  in its rotten, crumbling, moldy glory … and we had to do something about it.

Meantime, we were conducting an experiment that might have been mistaken for the 10 plagues on Egypt.

Our rotten wood was home to, in order: mushrooms (inedible, we think) … a horde of gnats … a legion of ants. We might have moved on to frogs, locusts and boils, but we finally got the landowner, Mr. Iyad, to come out to the place last week, and he pledged to deal with our 3-4 complaints. Of which the rotten wood in the kitchen was the most significant.

So, this morning, about 8:45 (or 4:45 a.m., print journalist’s time), we heard a pounding on our door. It was Mr. Mohammed, our trusty/nosy caretaker, with a little barefoot guy who was, apparently, the carpenter who is going to take care of things.

(This, one day after Mr. Mohammed brought by an electrician who, in a matter of about 30 minutes, rigged up a light over our front door.)

So, out of a coma, and to the door, and I welcomed the lads in.

Within minutes, the carpenter guy was pulling apart the disgusting quasi-wood that formed the base of the cabinet. And, yes, each soggy piece was crawling with the quick little black ants native to the region.

I was about as eager to deal with that as I would be to stick my hand into a beehive … but I also didn’t want 10,000 ants leaping off the rotten 2x4s and moldy molding into the living room … where stamping them out (quite literally) might take all summer.

So, yes, I made three trips out to the dumpster carrying these disgusting, crumbling-in-my-hands bits of wood and molding (ah, so that’s where they get the word), and the lithe little ants are running up my arms. It was some kid’s nightmare, is what it was.

And how to describe the completely rotted wood … the wood that supported sprouting mushrooms? Imagine some soft wood that you have rubbed over a cheese grater. And the pile of pulverized sawdust that might result? Except it seems almost to clot a little, forming little furry dark balls of rot … and that was it!

Anyway, the carpenter was braver than I because he was now flat on the kitchen floor, reaching beneath the kitchen cabinet,  which was being propped up by four legs of plastic, about three inches tall, sweeping it out … and Lord knows when that was last done.

Brilliant! The wood is gone and we can get under (and clean under) the kitchen cabinet from now on!

Of course, it was all fairly appalling. The room smelled like rotting vegetation, and I wondered how much mold I was inhaling so as to take its rightful place with the sand I sucked down a few nights ago.

Mr. Mohammed came back, eventually, to second-guess the carpenter in a dueling-handyman sort of way.  I asked for a final tall bit of wood — rotten at its base — to be pulled off. Mr. Mohammed seemed to think it was a load-bearing sheet — holding up the granite counter top. He and the carpenter then had an animated conversation in (I think) Urdu … and the carpenter won. He wanted to yank out the wood, too, and he was vindicated. Out if came, and the counter didn’t fall.  Thank you!

Meanwhile, he was sweeping up the mold/rot/ants (living and dead) as they came to light, and I was taking the dust pan to the pungent dumpster. Mr. Mohammed produced a putty knife to scrape off some of the gunky glue/adhesive that once upon a time had held the wood in place on the stone floor. More stuff in the air! Yay!

He then asked me something that sounded like “riff” and I repeated it back, and he nodded and I had no idea what he was talking about. His English is lousy and my Urdu is nonexistent. So we were at loggerheads. He disappeared. A few minutes later he returned with a plastic bottle of something named, of course, “Rif”. Turns out, Rif is a sort of general cleaner, and it broke down the gunk on the floor as the carpenter wiped it.

Besides yanking out the old stuff and jamming four legs under the cabinet, the carpenter drilled four holes in the metallic cabinet to fix the legs with screws. Then we picked up, swept, and voila, no more dead wood in Deadwood. A kitchen cabinet made only of sheet metal, suspended three inches into the air.

The hope is … if we survive the mold currently floating around in the house … we shouldn’t have to deal with it again soon. Not a single bit of wood is on the floor in this room. And, we won’t have entire colonies of insects happily feasting on our rotting cabinetry.

This is a turning point. I can feel it. The ants zipping about in the room tonight … just scouts.  That’s all. We got the home base. Sure we did. I carried it off, and some of the survivors tried to escape via my forearms.

So, now? The jumping spiders in the corners … and maybe that weird white spider with the web on the roof above me. Not even any rotting wood. Too easy.  The zoo has left the building.