Too Many Ants

For Christmas, my mom sent me this delicious treat:

 

(gourmetfancy.com)

With bits of real Peppermint Candycane!!

I’ve yet to find packs of hot chocolate here, and a regular-sized box of candy canes costs $10.

I tried to have a bit of self control and wait until a special occasion. Yesterday I had a MASSIVE craving for something chocolaty and minty.

Occasion enough for me, I went to the kitchen to plug in the water heater.

I was almost too excited to notice that the heater was…moving. Crawling, to be exact, with hundreds of thousands of ANTS.

 

inside, outside, upside, downside...

Momentarily, my craving was replaced by repulsion. The following pictures document the disassembling and cleaning of the heater. This involved an inappropriate fork (do you spy?), hair cutting scissors, and GAZILLIONS of ants.

After everything was clean, I was afraid the re-assembly process would be a bit tricky. Thankfully, I had taken lots of pictures of the dis-assembly and was able to put the heater back together relatively quickly. 

These are the words I desperately wish I could type. (lemonysnicket.com)

The first piece I tried, I put in backward which sealed the lid tightly; I was unable to pry it open to put the rest together. The remaining pieces littered the counter.

Wrong. Totally wrong.

Ant-repulsion having been taken care of, my chocolate-mint craving came back full force. The rice cooker proved to be a good water-heating choice.

Success!

And what of the broken heater? This guy pried the lid off in 30 seconds and had the whole thing put back together before dinner.