Back of my neck gettin' dirty and gritty

Little beauties, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

We got crabs this weekend. My husband and I, and my mom and dad, even our kids. And if you live in Baltimore you know that this didn't entail some kind of creepy Roman orgy situation - it entailed... well, I took pictures. SFW, really.

I'm not too sure what came over me Saturday afternoon. Maybe it was the Baltimore Facebook phenomenon of somebody changing their status to "CRABS TONIGHT!" and two dozen friends leaping in to comment, "Where are you getting them?" "How much for #1 males?" "Is the truck on Rte 97 still there?" I swear, you'd think it was code for really good marijuana. Huh. Maybe it is. I've always been a little slow about drugs.

We have recently decided that this summer is Vegetarian Summer. Why not? We don't eat a whole lot of meat anyway, I think the kids should see what it's like. Oh but they are pissed. I am not sure why - I'm not sure they can accurately identify what in their diet is meat in the first place. So we placated them somewhat. We assured them they they could have burgers on the 4th of July, hot dogs at the pool, and ribs whenever anyone offered them some.

Also, we explained to them that we would, of course, be following the dietary regime known as "Baltimore Vegetarianism." We learned about that one night out with Bob's brother Joe, a lifelong vegetarian who was experiencing a major attack of the wavers when confronted with the spectacular, cannonball-sized crab cakes at the restaurant around the corner. Baltimore Vegetarian is similar to Baltimore Kosher. Crabs don't count. In our case, fish don't count either.



This is the crab truck near the pool. Bob pointed it out last year, commenting, "I guess that's one of your no-no's." (I have rigorous and complicated rules about where food should come from. The Peruvian rotisserie chicken on the streetcorners in our old neighborhood in Brooklyn was an Absolutely Not.) I surprised him when I gave it an appraising glance and said, "Actually I bet that's a good place to get crabs." Live crabs and corn. Buy them off a truck.



Live crabs. You can buy cooked crabs from a store, usually one called "Captain (Insert-Salty-Sounding-Name-Here)". But it's nothing to cook them at home, and you get to have live, slightly dangerous invertebrates in your house.

Mao peeked in at these, a bushel of jimmies (males), with their sharp claws and carapaces, and when they did a big convulsive clacking squirm he jumped a little and grabbed my hand. He denies it. He's almost eight and I bet that's the last time he'll ever grab my hand like that.





The crab guy showed them both how to hold a crab. I have never done such a thing with my bare hand, and Bob, who is from the Cleveland suburbs, nearly fainted. My dad likes to tell a story about how a crab speared his uncle right through the thumbnail with one of those claws. When a crab has clenched its claw, separating the claw from the crab has no effect. You have to bash the two pincers apart with a hammer. Freaky little alien beasts. Yeeeuch.

We bought two dozen and got a few for free (to my Baltimore friends - the truck at the corner of Woodbourne and Perring Parkway, $40/dozen for large males, 2 dozen for $74) and met my parents at my house. They brought their crab pot, but any extremely large pot will do, you just need to make a platform at the bottom so that the crabs don't get wet. In the pot goes about 8 cups of liquid, mostly water, a couple cups of vinegar if you like, some people swear by beer.



In Florida, I have heard, they BOIL crabs. Let us not speak of it again.



Despite having lived in Baltimore for, oh, 7 years now, we haven't had crabs that often. Having little kids put the kibosh on eating crabs for a long time - you cannot tend a baby when your hands are completely encrusted with Old Bay. That shit is mostly salt and cayenne pepper. The last place it should end up is on a baby's face. Or, god help him, inside his diaper.

Old Bay is the crab spice that everyone knows about, but purists make their own spice mix, and philistines like me pay the guy at the crab truck a buck for a bag of miscellaneous red-orange dust. Some crab spice mixes have more black pepper, some have more cayenne and paprika. You just have to give it a sniff to see if it's to your taste. And you have to really load it on. Plus rock salt.



Twenty minutes should do, during which time the boys can shuck the corn. In our family, there is always some discussion about "what else" we should have, because "nobody fills up on crabs". Most everyone agrees with corn. You can eat it with your hands and it's a vegetable. Some people believe in tomato wedges, for scraping the steamed spice mix up from the outside of the crabs, oh yeah, that is GOOD to eat... and if you're at a restaurant eating crabs there may be french fries or something. But in my opinion, "what else" is - more crabs.



We also had time to slick up Zhou's mohawk for his grandparents' benefit, and to demonstrate the Time Warp. My kids are 6 and 7, and I am here to tell you, there is nothing inherently dirty about the pelvic thrust. It's the cutest thing you've ever seen, in fact.



This is the point at which I stopped taking pictures for a while, because I got all crab-gooky. Please note, however, who is first at the table, mallet at the ready.



Not to be outdone, his brother, at the age of six, not only uses tools to get at crabmeat (I myself am strictly a hands-and-teeth hunter-gatherer), but has also inherited his grandfather's tendency to brag. "Look at this! Is this the backfin?! It's so big!" Both the kids ate, must have been, four crabs apiece, stayed at the table until the last claws were excavated, asked for more. I admire that commitment. They would have been the members of the tribe to have tried oysters for the first time.



My dad accepted a beer (or four) from our cooler and observed, "Since when have you two (referring to my husband and myself, noted beer snobs) started drinking Miller Lite? In cans?" Hm. Yes. Well, the answer is: Bob's lost a bunch of weight working out, and one day he just sort of realized that he might reach his weight loss goal a little faster if he tried drinking light beer. I gave it a try when I realized that "blue beer" (we kind of can't bring ourselves to call it "Miller Lite") has way less alcohol than fancy beer. I love me a Dogfish Head 60-minute IPA, but one of those and I am no good for the rest of the morning. Plus? The recycling? So much lighter and less clanky!



Zhou, gazing over my shoulder right now, sighed, "I wish that picture could come alive... so I could have those crabs, those delicious crabs."

Happy solstice, from Baltimore.

And I don't like the way his boys keep lookin' at me

I love islands of civility, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

First in a possible series of meditations by my husband, who, drunk and bored and in Detroit, typing with two thumbs on a Blackberry, is funnier than I am on my best days.

Begin transmission:

About 1971 and i was maybe 6 when my father took me and my brother jim to a Cleveland Barons game at the now demised Cleveland Arena, a facility which then Cavs coach said, "led the league in cars stolen from the parking lot." I have only the dimmest most impressionistic memories of being there. I don't kno who they played. If the won. Were thy in the NHL then? I believe so, if briefly. Smoke. The players circling the half ice before the game, ominously, like ravens. The Zambomi (of course). I liked the logo, i can't remember it precisely but there was a monocle involved. Now that i have kids i realice i almost certainly fell asleep, a least on the ride home. It is a wonderful memory full or warmth and protection in the presence of menice, the unknown. Kernal of childhood.

Well that was the last time i watched this much hockey. (One period so far. . If redWings win, locals go bananas. That would be cool. I may burn a car myself...) i am at a fairly pthetic rooftop bar (there is a portapotty up here) in the decimated heart of downtown detroit. The Greektown casino wafts soullessly over us, its fabulous blue translucense ethereal, detached, other, safe: which is rather the point. (It is beautiful though.) Down on earth, bright red wheels-withiwings shirts dominate. My chums up here are tattooed, edgy, teeth are at a premium. Chants of Go Wings and Lets Go Red Wings pop up, not at the many tense moments, taut pauses, during course of the game itself but in spasmodic outbursts during the commercials. We are, it feels, biding our time. I am told this would be the 5th championship in last 12 yrs. Besting the Yankees Red Sox Patriots during that period. Probbly have to go back to Jordan's Bulls to match it. Before that, what?, Russell's Celts. Did Gretsky win that many? Well now pburgh scores people are yelling 'fuck you.' Ok. That's fair. I hope they lose. I hope they both lose. How's that for fuck you. Althoug, burning that car would be cool.

The pointless 'People Mover' whirs by. It is a little two car monorail train that connects this crappy part of downtown with similarly other crappy parts of downtown culminatiing (arguably) in the gargantuan cylindrical blue and bankrupt GM headquarters. Like so many (all so far) of the urban rejuvenation efforts here it reeks of trying to hard, forced. At once outsized in unfulfilled ambition and puny in the face of the forces marshalled against it, the empty skyscrapers, and streets. The crowd is warming up now. Cheering for what seems to be (to the uninitiated) spectacular play of the goalie. (Another flashbaack. Not long after the Barons game, i read ' Roger Corzier Daredevil Goalie' about a RedWing, mde me the man i am today.) (Hey pess the attack. Shouts of 'Keep it in.' 'Shoot!' Actual applause how quaint, you would never hear hat t football o basketball.

The game is dizzying. Brought to you by the Marines - what does that tell you?
Use of the word 'outlet' as a verb is fun, as in '... outletted to Grvrnidki...' Up and back. The players are, in interview pregame etc, so unostentatious. Bearded, hockey being more or less a delay in that crane-operator career they were pursuing. the blur of it all. Another People Mover, empty i can see. They've popped on these bright construction lights now up here. Harsh. I realize, as the sun is set, there are no other lights up here. So thse offensive glaring orbs outshing the omnipresent flatscreen. A couple of sets of christmas lights would suffice, boys, at a tenth the cost. Just like the portapotty. Cheap. Poorly executed. Like the gm bldg, overkill, faux gaudy, uncomfortabl w the need for scale and pace.

I'll never make it thru the third perod. The poet wants to say something about preserving the moment of uncertainty and hope, perfect, medias res, letting the bull live, leaving it like those Barons, loved and unknown, forlorn (and monocle'd), just colors and and exotic lingering cigar incense. But in fact i am just too drunk and my thumbs are cramping up. Routine hockey injury i am sure. Go Browns :b

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

East 55th and Euclid Avenue

In spring, I try to get them to let me cut their hair off. As an incentive, I offer to dye it if they like. It's only hair, and they're only children. Why not?

Today seemed like the perfect day for it - the house has recently been professionally cleaned in preparation for a Big Event on Saturday, and I'd like to keep it nice until then. Plus, they're off to see their uncles and aunties this weekend in the middle of tick territory, so short hair seems like a good idea.

Let's set this up:



This is their winter look. Well, Mao usually wears a shirt under his biker jacket, but I'm talking about the hair. That kid has such thick hair he's been compared to a) Danny Torrance and b) David Cassidy.

This is what we did today:


Ohh, how I wanted to leave a long shock on top, but once I started cutting, he just wanted it ALLLL off. I felt it too - I came very damn close to running those clippers around my ears and across the back of my neck. It would feel SO GOOD to get some of this stuff off my neck.

He wanted just one orange racing stripe down the side. Understated, is our Mao.

And the other?



Wanted to look like "Syndrome with a mohawk."



Eat his dust - that's MY boy.

In me own words by Graham Roumieu - review

I don't do this often. But I gotta.

I was at Book Expo in New York last weekend, tramping around publishers' booths, telling them what a white-hot children's literature blogger I was and how they should send me free books all the time (some of them bought it - suckas), when I stopped in at the Manic D booth, ostensibly to look at the new Francesca Lia Block, but mostly because they were not displaying a single book about the rain forest or the solar system or bullying, except maybe one about how bullying can be a lucrative career choice for tween girls.

Anyway, I picked up this book and laughed my ass off. Despite my feet hurting A LOT and my shoulder carved into ruts from the 50 lbs of books I was lugging around in a tote bag. (Confidential to China Miéville - OH MY GOD YUM.)

Ok. Listen. I not know where all you morons come from but holy water no hurt Bigfoot. Garlic and Crucifix also no. Fire, pitchfork, Silver bullet Ok. Cryptonite do nothing. It not even real. Please stop sending letters asking "What you vulnerability? What Bigfoot?" Like I tell. What next me bank account number? Why not you invest time in moving out of Parent basement? Maybe have sex or something.

It's Bigfoot's autobiography. Bigfoot is afraid of digital watches and Irish people. He never went to Vietnam. He's a nifty dancer and a would-be screenwriter and he mourns his pal Denis, who I think was a hamster. And I tell you all this and YET! Still not spoil!

The book is written and illustrated by Graham Roumieu (Cat & Gnome, A Really Super Book About Squirrels). It may be the only book I actually purchase for myself this year. When I read it aloud to my friends and co-workers, which I have done like three times tonight (Storytime? I got your Storytime RIGHT HERE), I use my Drunk Cookie Monster voice. What voice will YOU use?

Fug the juvenile series biography, or The Floating Head of Kanye West is Coming for YOU!

Shave that. And get some sun.



Get your hair out of your eyes.



O HAI: Your strobe didn't fire.



AAAAA!



These are the things that go through my mind when I stroll from our library's adult reference desk to the children's section, and pass the display in front of Biography. You just have to assume that the underpaid young liberal arts majors who populate the publishing industry (and I have been there, I know) just hate celebrities, because it's hard to believe that you couldn't find a less shifty-looking royalty-free photo of Tobey Maguire. Look at him - he looks like he's hanging out in Tompkins Square Park pretending to pass out clean syringes but really scoping out the street kids, looking for one to take home and dissect. In fact, I sort of believe that if you called his people and said you were doing a book for kids, they'd FedEx you over a nice one and cut you a deal.

After all, Ella Fitzgerald looks great on the cover of her bios. So does George Bush. Even people who aren't widely considered to be even moderately photogenic:



...don't look near so bad as Lindsay Lohan does here:



Her eyeballs of hate seem to say, "I see you, Mitchell Lane Publishers, and I am coming for you." Nobody puts Baby in a pink ribbon frame.

I'm Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle

Me by Sam, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Among the shit I ain't had time for lately (i.e. and to wit: blogging, grammar)... reading.

You should see the books stacked up on my read / review shelf. Now that I have one. Which - oh my god - so great! (Wow, I was just my friend Jaime there for a second. Hi James! See you in two weeks!) But setting up the office was not time doing work that might be done in the office. Also, planning the music for today's Circus Arts Club performance at school was not time doing work that might be done in the office. Although, I did do that in the office, because I did it in iTunes, and you know what? You'd think that after having listened to the Beastie Boys since like 1987, which is pretty much the year Adam Horowitz was BORN, I'd have a copy of "Sabotage" in my iTunes. But not.

Or, in fact, you'd think that I could walk my flat ass up the street and borrow it from a neighbor: I may not be absolutely sure that I have a neighbor who has a working hand mixer that I can borrow, but I AM absolutely sure that the combined music collection of Kyle and Gretchen, Matt and Chelsea, Stacy and Lui, Peter and Chris, and David and Chuck contains at least one copy of Ill Communication. (I LOVE MY STREET.) But I plunked down my $1.29 and now I have an iTunes copy of "Sabotage". I'll get the rest of the CD from Kyle.

But right, I am scraping ten minutes here between ordering bus tickets to NYC for Book Expo (HELLOOO, KidLit Drink Night!) and getting ready for this performance this afternoon, and I was going to talk about books.

Here's a book that showed up just yesterday:



Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea by Alice Waters

If you were a world-famous restauranteur and intiator of a food revolution, and wanted to take a middle school in hand, what could you do? Where would you start? Alice Waters convinced a MS principal to let her start a garden on school property, and several years later, the food garden was incorporated into the science, math, and even English curricula. You should see some of the stuff the kids wrote in their journals while sitting under the arbors in their school garden in Berkeley, CA.

GOD I would love to see this happen in Baltimore. I've been watching the Edible Schoolyard idea for 10 years - the Berkeley model has been repeated at a school in New Orleans - and it seems to me it addresses about a million ills. Innovative curriculum that thinks on its feet and adjusts to match the materials available; lessons about nutrition; better science instruction; getting kids outdoors; getting kids into a kitchen.

I didn't manage to do more than skim the book and look at the gorgeous photos (Prince Charles visited, not that he's gorgeous, but you know, when the Prince comes, so does a really good photographer). I did see enough to know: this is one orgasm of an education book. Would make a great end of year gift for the educator in your life. Just be sure when you give it, you specify that you're not saying, "HEY dammit - do this!" Not everybody has the resources of Alice Waters.

Let Me Eat Cake: a celebration of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, and a pinch of salt by Leslie Miller

Ok now THIS one I am seriously a delinquent for not reading. Leslie lives right around the corner, and got me an advance copy for FREE, and what did I do? I read the part she said she was worried about, and then I put it on the shelf and unpacked another dozen boxes of filthy OLD books.

But in the bits I read (I also read the last chapter, and the first part), I found that I thought I knew Leslie, because Leslie has a blog, and is my friend on Facebook, and posts her beautiful photos to Flickr, not to mention I see her at parties and shit, but I did not quite know how good Leslie writes. Leslie writes GOOD.

That alone should convince you to pick up Let Me Eat Cake, but I will also say that Leslie is FUNNY. Funny + Good = Read it. Not that anyone needs me to tell them, apparently: the 19 copies in my library system have been more or less entirely checked out ever since their arrival.

And look at that pretty cake on the cover - MMM!

I was sent this Huffington Post article on the Love as the Practice of Freedom conference at Princeton by my old friend (library cataloger supreme and romance novelist) Ann Herendeen. Ann self-published her first book, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, a gay Regency romance novel (yeah I told her I was never gonna read it, I barely read adult fiction as it is, and romance? and Regency? although gay? interesting!) and it was so popular that Harper picked it up. Harper! Nice!

The article is the most thought-provoking thing I've read in a while. It presents romance as a "fundamentally progressive activity", breaking down boundaries, transgressing mores, challenging the status quo. And I buy that. What is more, the romance novel is "an important transmitter of values," says the article's author, Hillary Rettig. I like thinking of that: the ladies who read romance novels are - I don't want to generalize here - in some cases not young, not NPR listeners, not people who live and think on the edge. Other romance novel readers ARE. (Ok, Left Brainiac the Baking Librarian, I know I'm a snob (and you know I'm a snob), and I'm trying to get over it!) I love the idea of these nice romance-reading ladies maybe rooting for a protagonist (and a protagonista) who are non-white, or not completely heterosexual, or whatever.

To that end, I thought I'd give romance one more try. Left Brainiac recommended Jayne Castle (one of Jayne Krentz's brands), who writes strong women and strong men in a sci-fi setting. I checked out Ghost Hunter, and I read the first chapter in the parking lot waiting to pick up the kids. Hm. Awfully heavy on dialogue. Long scenes. Lots of simmering. Not for me. I may try Ann's book after all.




Then there are the impulse books I've been snatching up while shelving new books at the library. Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection attracted me first with its steampunky green and gold and black cover, then with the inside cover blurb which made it sound meta without being tedious, like Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. I may have to force my friend Melissa to read this book and tell me about it.

I also grabbed up The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet because of its cover: an engraving of a bird skeleton nestled in a flat box with a pair of dividers and an old-style museum specimen label. Boy am I a sucker for that style. But leafing through: neato! Tricks and illustrations and marginalia - I love that stuff in kids' books, and it's about time somebody (other than Mark Z. Danielewski, man I can't handle those books) served some of that fun up for grownups. Plus, blurbs by Gary Shteyngart and Stephen King, kind of an interesting combo).

I also picked up Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery by Jason Buhrmester, because a) it looked funny b) it looked cool and c) it was about crime. Also, the word "Baltimore" appears in the back-cover summary.

Bruce Sterling has a new book which I am sure to like. When I can read it.

And the latest YA book that everyone seems to be recommending for adults too is The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. There are zombies. I want to read this book. I may have to just rely on Eerily Similar Paula's assessment - she was probably the one who recommended it in the first place.


All this is not to mention the VERY nice books the journal I review for has been sending me lately - thanks for easing up on the nonfiction about China! sorry all my reviews have been late this entire calendar year! Does "sheepish" come across on the Internet? I am sheepish.

AND not to mention the stacks and stacks of picture books that I have actually READ in the past few months, and just not been able to review. Orangutan Tongs: Poems to Tangle Your Tongue? YES! When the Moon Forgot? A little weird, but extremely lovely. Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea? You don't need ME to tell you anything Steve Jenkins is involved with is awesome.

THERE. It's FRIDAY. I spent some time doing something that was not work, not school, and not house (although I have killed several ants while working here at the kitchen counter, so I guess that counts as a little house stuff. There goes another one - SMISH, you little sugar-addicted motherfucker!). You know what? I should just break out the leftover rum-soaked pineapple and give up on the day! Wouldn't that fucking rock? It's ten a.m. Who's with me?

It's a thin line between love and hate

My life for the past week, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

No, it isn't. It's actually a broad gloppy painty line.

For instance:
I HATE painting trim, and I especially do not enjoy it in rainy humid weather. I have bad knees, and terrible eyesight, and ok most of the time I have a steady hand, but jeezely crap - I had to pick dark grey paint to go against that pale-yellow wall? EVERY mishap shows.

But I am done, and now? I LOVE the dark grey against the yellow. I carried the grey through into the powder room off the kitchen, which has like eggplant walls, and the grey looks great with THAT. It's the same grey I used for the trim in the basement, which is a pretty toothpaste blue, and that grey looks terrific there too. It is the L'Oreal Succulent Rose lipstick of trim colors - looks good on everyone.

Some other things to love and/or hate:



I LOVE where I am sitting right now. Since we made a new playroom/guest room in the basement...



(which is to LOVE), we were able to turn the old playroom/guest room into an office, with a desk for the computer, and a table for kids to do art and homework...



... and lots and lots of bookshelves. All that new shelf space meant that I could finally unpack the 27 boxes of books and comics that were stored in the basement and in the guest room closet (which is now freed up (for - whaaat?! - clothes? CRAZAY.) and consolidate the piles of books that were living all over the house...



... notably on the radiator cover in the living room. Not having piles of crap on this thing significantly enhances my calm when I walk in that room.

I LOVE the random doodads I found while unpacking those books, most of which have been in boxes since we left Brooklyn in 2002.



21-cent stamps (when was postage 21 cents?), photo stickers of me and Bob with no children, 1000 lire, and 260 rupees. Of course, when Bob went through his boxes, he found currency from Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe (the most devalued currency EVER IN THE WORLD. Way to go, Zim!). But then he's been to a lot cooler places than I have.

Of course, emptying all those boxes means that we have A FEW cardboard boxes to get rid of...



... and for some reason Baltimore's every-two-week recycling schedule has skipped a week, so I have to live with this garbage dump on my porch for another week. HATE. Thank god we have a covered porch, else all this shit would be brown paste, in all this rain. Have I mentioned the rain? Kind of hating the rain, too.

But I LOVE the way this turned out:



We replaced a window in the basement during the renovation, and I kind of liked the old, munged-up frame. Plus it's the first window Mao ever broke.

The FIRST WEEK we lived in this house, Mao was NOT YET TWO, and Bob catches him in the driveway throwing gravel at the house. I love that! So when the contractors took the old window out, I got the kids and Bob to peep in at me through the window hole, and I printed up the photo life-sized. Made a shadow box out of the old frame - didn't clean it up too much, and I kept the glass, consolidating the broken pieces with special glass glue. So now I have a permanent record of how they looked when we did this giant project. Sort of like handprints in the cement, you know?

I LOVE that I stopped at Wockenfuss this morning and got some for myself, rather than depending on my men to buy me chocolate for Mother's Day.



As Teri Garr says in Tootsie, "I know I'm responsible for my own orgasm."

I LOVE the new blinds in the dining room.



Boy did they not want to go up. That trim is as old as the house and has never been painted, which is beautiful, but damn is it brittle. We have these cordless honeycomb blinds all over the house, and I really like their clean lines and the diffuse light they let in - hey I can be minimal sometimes, not everything in my house is chartreuse-and-turquoise batik!

On the other hand, I am looking for big fantastic batik fabric for curtains for the sliding door, so if you see any...

I LOVE the unobtrusive light-cutting shade in the kitchen:



But I have to say I HATE the moire pattern it makes with the window screen.

We rented one of those giant storage boxes you can keep in the driveway for the duration of the renovation, and this weekend, My Hero Husband got it all the way emptied out. Significant milestone. But when the truck came to pick it up:



Let's get another picture of that, shall we?



Those ruts are TWO FEET DEEP. Plus there's broken concrete all through there. We're going to be on a home tour the first week of June. WHAT am I going to do? HATE big trucks and mud.

And speaking of rain, rainy springs really seem to bring out the ants.



Hello, ant. I am going to kill you now.



Fantastik? Is some kind of ant neurotoxin - they're dead before they even feel the dart. And when you wipe up the dead ants? You're cleaning the counter!