How disturbed do you think you might be if you opened the door to your freezer and saw thousands of dead ants? I can tell you from my experience today that you’d be disgusted, but galvanized. I didn’t have time to stand there agape with wonder. I got the food out, threw away anything that was opened and looked as if it might have been contaminated, then swabbed away all the offending varmints, using every cleaning and disinfecting agent I could lay my hands on.

Only then, after I got all the frozen food I could save back into the freezer, did I have time to wonder how such an intrusion could even occur. This all happened in the freezer part of the refrigerator in my bathroom, not the one in the kitchen that I use and inspect every day, but it couldn’t have been happening for very long, because I put a couple of frozen organic pizzas in it after my shopping trip earlier this week. There were no ants then, I promise.

So what I’m thinking is that I must have left the door slightly ajar. That has been known to happen, because it has to be shut firmly, and I tend to be a little casual about those things from time to time. I probably won’t be casual any more, but who knows? I tend to face these crises and then forget about them. If you hang onto every unhappy thing that happens, you won’t live a very contented life.

There were some items in the freezer that have been in there too long and should have been thrown out anyway. Other than that, I was pleased at how little I had to get rid of. It was mostly packages on the bottom of the various stacks of frozen foods. Everything piled toward the roof seemed not to have been touched by the ants. And now I think that freezer is the cleanest it’s ever been, but I’ll be checking it fairly obsessively for a few days, at least.