Fire and Brimstone

 

Boxes Full of Hell Fire

If everything you bought at the box-store came in its own shipping box and you brought it home in those individual boxes, how many boxes would be stacked up at your front gate? Exactly. 

So many boxes . . . 

People think I get a lot of mail. Okay, yes, true. I get a lot of mail. But mostly it’s just boxes—lots and lots of boxes—which may or may not contain anything from a single sheet of paper or salt from the Himalayas. I like to play “Guess What’s In It.” People think mail means shoes, but it really means anti-fungal shampoo for Charlie, the itchy horse. Sometimes it means shoes, sometimes. But it always means stuff dropped off at the front gate in the long grass under the shiny Florida sun. 

Recently, I ordered an assortment of power bars that arrived in . . . you guessed it . . . a box . . . left at the front gate. I was excited to check out the new, exciting flavors.

Oldest grandson brought my eagerly awaited box, full of foil wrapped power bars, into the house.  He set it on my bed. What a good grandson!

A bit later, I picked up the box full of new, exciting flavors. Halfway to the kitchen my hands caught fire, and I screamed. Fire ants boiled out of the box that had been dumped in the long grass under the shiny Florida sun, apparently in a fire ant hill with a sign on it that said, “Come and get it.”

I chucked the box; ants cascaded to the floor, the wall, the atmosphere.

Drawn by the new, exciting flavors of the power bars, approximately ten thousand fire ants had taken up residence in the box and were working on carrying off my assortment.

I opened the box. The bars were covered with angry ants full of fire. They poured over the kitchen counter. I threw the foiled wrapped, not cheap, bars into the sink and tried to drown a mountain of ants. They backstroked their way out of the sink.

Screaming, I ran back to my bed where the box had been waiting for my happy arrival. There were pissed off ants, looking for a quick snack of not cheap power bars, in the bedspread, under my pillow, pouring down the bed skirt. I screamed some more and slapped at biting ants on my hands, arms, and hair. I threw the bedspread into the yard, probably on top of more fire ants, dropped kicked my pillows into the bushes, and stripped the bed down to the frame. 

“All I wanted was a low-cal, high protein snack that tasted good,” I wailed. 

Trying to save the power bars, I threw them into a Ziplock bag and then dumped them into the freezer. This morning I took them out of the freezer. Fire ants, slowed but still alive, crawled out of the Ziplock bag looking for someone to blame. I screamed and smashed ants.

I get a lot of mail—stuff in boxes. Most of the time it’s happy fun. Most of the time . . . 

Linda (Fire and Brimstone) Zern