I have written before about my li’l insect pals in Abu Dhabi. Including a few days ago. I didn’t think I would be writing about them again so soon.

But this was Armageddon. A whole nest of ants vs. moi and a squirt bottle of Windex. Inside the house. In the bedroom, actually. Yeah. (If the idea of bugs where you sleep creeps you out, stop right now.)

Did I mention we have not actually lived in the Teeny Apartment for the past three weeks or so? Friends of Leah’s are spending the summer out of Abu Dhabi, and offered their seriously luxe apartment to us. We are apartment-sitting, and trying to keep the plants alive, and just looking after things … but it isn’t much work (at all) and we instead have a huge upgrade in living conditions. (More about that later.)

Anyway, I have been checking in on the Teeny Apartment every few days, and part of it is to see what the ants are up to. I like to think there weren’t many targets of opportunity left for them, but they never give up, do they.

So, we both were over at the Teeny Apt tonight to pick up some clothes for a social event being put on by one of out coworkers … and while there, Leah said,  “The ants are all over your books.”

If she only knew.

My tiny library, in the Teeny Apartment, has had a short but eventful history.

We came over with a couple of books that I was to receive for my birthday (two days after we arrived), and I also brought a couple of the prime works on the recent history of the UAE (“From Rags to Riches” and “Arabian Sands”) … and I needed somewhere to put these, as well as the few other volumes I picked up. The 2009 U.S. Soccer media guide. A copy of “Don Quixote” that someone was giving away, a copy of “Gorki Park” that I bought here for, like, $1 …

The only likely place for the books was a sort of niche in the wall near the head of the bed. For no clear reason there is a recessed area about a foot wide and maybe five inches deep, which begins at about chest level. Almost as if it were made for books. A dozen or so, anyway, which is all I had.

Then, during the rainy season, one of the many leaks in the apartment … sprang up just above my library. Not a see-the-water-running-down-the-wall leak, but a steady small one … that fouled the bottoms of about half my books. Including an abridged volume of Churchill’s “History of the English-Speaking Peoples,” which I rather liked. And they also got a bit moldy, too. Yeah. Ugh.

So, I took the books off the shelf to let them dry when, of course, I should have thrown them out instantly. But I have real trouble throwing out books. Real. Trouble.

After a month or so decided I could return them to the same niche as long as I had something with which to prop up the books. Get them off the bottom of the niche, see? And I found two half-inch pieces of wood that seemed to be the perfect answer. Even if that part of the rotting wall leaked again, the books would be 1) away from the wall and 2) up off the bottom of the niche because they were atop these two little rectangles of wood.

Since then, one of the fronts in the apartment-wide battle vs. the ants has been in the niche area. Because just above the niche, about 10 feet high, is a hole in the wall through which passes the tube carrying cold air from the AC compressor (outside) to the blower  (inside). Ants had been wandering in and out of the space between the hose and the wall … and I had been regularly killing them … and eventually tried to tape up the empty spot.

But I have been vigilant there. And when Leah said “the ants have taken over your library” (without even applying for a card, I might note), I figured a few dozen scouts had seized upon that moment (10 p.m.) to make a reconaisance in force. “Uh, no,” Leah said, and left the room. (Her tolerance for ants is, like, zero.)

What I found, once I peered closely into/behind my books … was a colony of ants living in and behind them. Hundreds of ants. Swarming. Maybe a thousand of them. A black mass of black ants, with depth and wide and even some height. Like nothing I have ever seen inside modern living quarters, actually.

Immediate and drastic measures were required. I didn’t even bother to think about “could I have missed them all this time as they were moving in?” … or “did the whole nest move in in a single day?” I went for the Windex and a bunch of plastic trash bags.

I pulled the books off from the top (they were stacked, see), one by one. If they were clear from ants I put them on a nightstand. (Still couldn’t throw them out.) Got down to about the third from the bottom … and the hostilities began.

I picked up all but the last book (the Churchill), tossed them into plastic bags and immediately marched them to the dumpster across the street before the ants could climb back out of the bag.

I then came back for the serious work. Picking up a corner of the Churchill book, which was crawling with ants, tossing it in a bag … and dealing with the core of the nest.

They already were heading off in all directions, disturbed from my previous removals, and I didn’t want hundreds of survivors rallying not far away, so I acted fast. I put the Windex bottle on “full automatic” and started blasting.

Windex kills them, but not right away, and not when they are sitting/crawling five or six deep. Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt. A pause to pick off the two dozen who were making a break down the wall.

Actually, it was rather disgusting. That many ants, a whole nest of them, about three feet from where my head would be if I were still sleeping there.

Eventually, nearly all of them had stopped moving. Including at least one that was about three times the size of the others who somehow had escaped the main scene of carnage and gotten about eight inches away. I took this for the queen. She went down, but hard. I needed several shots of the ammonia to kill her off.

I paused to look at the mess. Ants over a spread of a couple of yards, some of them falling off the wall as they died, tumbling down to the floor.

Then came the cleanup. Brushing the bodies up from the mildewy bottom of the niche, which I had made only soggier with my generous application of Windex. That took another 10 minutes, the picking up of bodies and whatever else that was — bits of food, eggs, etc. Whatever was in the nest.

I decided they had been living IN the Churchill book, which had been mold-stained. Yes. A crack had appeared in the pages, and they were in there, perhaps somehow living on the paper? Or the mold that was on the paper?

Anyway, I got up most of the bodies, threw them out, washed the bodies off my hands … and yeah, it was not fun.

The niche is now clear,  and as clean as it will be. I like to think that I killed the queen and almost the entire colony. But some outriders must still be out there. Not enough, I like to think, to recreate the colony where it had been. And, of course, the food and shelter (the Churchill) is now in a dumpster.

So, yeah. The war continues. I hope it doesn’t turn into The Seven Years War, or something. They haven’t given up yet, but I like to flatter myself that they may recognize a cordon sanitaire around my position. They can have the patio. They can wander around the place. But they can’t actually live inside.