Carpenter Ants (kind of a long story, but a good one)

Where to begin...

A couple of years ago we had this big, old, beautiful Cottonwood Tree. The only problem with it was that everytime the wind blew (and it's New Mexico, it blows a lot) the front yard would be covered with branches. Once, there was a branch so big that the kids could climb and play on it. Well, rather than risking a branch falling on our house, the neighbor's house, their car (as it had done before) or Heaven forbid on a person, and because the leaves from it were unmanagable, we decided to have it cut down. I'm beginning to think that this was a HUGE mistake.

We cut the tree down in March of 2005. That summer, the tree went into survival mode and sprouts from the roots were everywhere: our yard, the neighbors' yards; there were even sprouts across the street and in places you wouldn't believe that tree's roots could reach. So Chad and his dad put some stump killer on it and the sprouts went away.

So now to the subject: Carpenter ants.
We have had the GIGANTIC ants around the yard that are massive I'll make a line to show you how long they are ________. That's pretty long for an ant. I apologize if your computer screen is bigger than mine and it's actually bigger than the ants really are. Anyway, they're about 3/4 inch long. And they're black and scary. I caught one in the girls' bedroom and there just happened to be a water bottle lid in there and I was messing with the ant and it could grab on to and hold the lid!

So I looked it up on the internet and I found out that these boogers like to live in rotting tree stumps. So now, not only do I have an eyesore of a tree stump in my front yard that kids like to climb onto and jump off of, now it is a nest for gigantor ants! I should have kept the tree! Maybe my house wouldn't be so hot, but that's a different story altogether.