Call of Cthulhu - Ants are to Humans, as Humans are to Eldritch Beings

There's this great thread based on this question: If Cthulhu can be summoned by humans who are so far beneath it, why can’t humans be summoned by ants?

Here's the Thread: https://tyrantisterror.tumblr.com/post/175660420519/titleknown-raposinhachan-weasowl

Basically, if a bunch of ants suddenly chant your name* and you pay attention to them and sometimes do favors to them out of a whim and amusement, why isn't this like human cultists worshipping Cthulhu.

This of course escalates into a petty war between human roommates using their own set of ant worshippers to do their bidding; mimicking a war between Mythos deities where the deities won't attack each other directly because that'll be assault and illegal and subject to arrest and jail time.

One amusing idea is where an ant asks the human to make another ant fall in love with that ant, so the human, unable to make ants fall in love, decides to wipe out the ant nest except for the two ants, fulfilling the ant's wish, to the ant's utter horror.

So, where am I going with this?

My kitchen is getting invaded by ants. So, I've been waging a war against them. I've used ant bait, insecticide spray, and now diatomaceous earth.

Each morning, I crush a few with my fingers and wash them down the sink. They keep on coming and I keep on wiping them out. I don't want to poison my kitchen, so there's some tolerance for their presence and I don't have time to continuously watch for them. Is this what happens when you annoy Cthulhu and he starts killing humans? At some point, it's not worth his effort, he'd rather just go about his normal business; it's not worth his time, unless you swarm his bag of chips or move eggs into his kitchen appliances (I found some ant with eggs in my Instant Pot, didn't know until I plugged it in and the heat drove them out).

When I flick ants from my kitchen counter into the sink, they are flung "ant miles," almost teleported to another location (from counter to the sink), before a flood of water drags them down the drain. Is this how Gates work?

Do the ants notice that Bob has suddenly disappeared, his ant body vanished without a trace, his ant trail ending suddenly? And when they go down that swirling drain, do they suddenly have the epiphany that that was how Bob died?

I leave the ones inside the house mostly alone, but I've left ant bait outside and sprayed the outside with insecticide. They're very good at avoiding the ant bait. Now, I've moved to using diatomaceous earth. As I lay down a white chalky line of dust around my house, it starts to look like a protective circle, cross this line and you die!

When I look down on them, I can see their destination as they crawl across my tiled floor or countertop. Do I crush them or go on my way, hoping that the diatomaceous earth or ant bait will work and they'll all die in 48 hours, wiping out their colony; creating a ghost town full of bodies, consisting of dried out husks.

Is there a heaven for ants? If the answer is no, then what does that mean for humans?

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chant your name*. I mean even if they get your name wrong, that's note worthy in itself, enough for them to get your attention. And if they actually get it right, wow, double bonus points. This footnote is really commentary about the controversy on correct pronunciation of various Mythos deity names.

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p.s. Right after posting this, over 20 ants clustered in a circle, heads pointed to the circle's center, near my kitchen's garbage can. I must of dripped something sticky on the floor. That caught my attention. I immediately killed all of them with a spray cleaner.

p.s.s. The day after wiping out the summoning circle, most of the ants have vanished. I've only seen a few solitary ants left. I think they got my message. Success!

p.s.s.s. They're pretty persistent. I'm still killing about 20/day. They're tapering off. Every morning, I wake up and commit ant murder.

p.s.s.s.s. You really need to circle your house with diatomaceous earth. After sprinkling some where they're entering the house and adding a line of it, they find another entrance yards away. I've done this several time already. The ants peter out, then a few days later they return and I find a new ant trail from the outside entering the house through a different crack at the base of the house (or brickwork) or on a concrete foot path with a crack that apparently tunnels under my house.

p.s.s.s.s.s. After killing so many of them daily, I'm beginning to get some satisfaction of hearing them pop when I crush them or smelling the slightly perfumed odor that follows crushing one. I feel no guilt in killing them. I count the number I crush as a way of measuring how far they've decreased in number and whether their invasion of my house will end. I should be a god to them and they should fear me. They are light sensitive and sense vibration. When I approach, I can tell they know "something" is coming. When one dies, the pheromones it releases makes the rest flee in random directions.

p.s.s.s.s.s.s. It's been about 2 months since this all started. I'm still killing them. I've become some sort of ant serial killer / genocidal maniac. Sometimes it's just satisfying to just step on them and leave their bodies stuck to the floor. I almost got rid of them all and then Bam! they find the kitchen trash can and suddenly a flood of ants show up again.

p.s.s.s.s.s.s.s. Ants have 250,000 neurons and are definitely smarter than a Roomba Vacuum. They flee danger and can sense danger. They do random walks looking for food and water. When they find it, they signal other ants to follow their trail to sustenance. They carry eggs, actually their eggs are microscopic, they're really carrying papa, to safety. When there's a danger signal they scatter. They're light sensitive and like to come out at night and hide in shadow. Pretty darned smart from some thing you can probably model with a computer program.

p.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s. I think they're finally wiped out. Diatomaceous earth just pushes them away from public areas and they just find new paths to food and water. So, I went with a gel/liquid poison, Terro. It's basically Borax suspended in syrup. First there was a wave of interest, then a die off, then the survivors were the grease and water seeking ants which avoided the syrup. About a week later, a new batch of ants, probably newly hatched, came for the syrup. It's been two days and I haven't spotted one ant. It's been 3.5 months since I started this blog thread. The other ant traps, which have solid granular poison, have a nerve poison that is taken back into the nest and it is fed to ant larvae which break it down and are fed to other ants and hopefully the queen. Diatomaceous earth and Borax are basically non-toxic to humans and pets, especially in the quantities used to kill the ants, whereas the granular nerve poison ant bait could cause toxicity problems to humans and pets.

p.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s. Success. I've cleansed my realm of ants. I have risen from slumber and the Ant-apocalypse has come to pass.

p.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s. They're back! Exactly 2 years to the day of the original posting of this article. I'm salting the earth with diatomaceous earth. The big rain storms washed away the old protective circle.

p.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s. It's like they're performing a ritual around a summoning circle, but they're really happily drinking poison and bringing it back home, destroying their whole colony. From their point of view, it's manna from heaven. At one point, they'll all start dying and wonder what happened.