Nest

From the ground I could see the work of my team and I. Over the deteriorating roof of the trailer, balanced on the mountain, we had constructed a tin roof. This would keep the rain from getting into the home of the people we were helping. It felt good to see, like we had really helped, but the week wasn't over.

I looked with some pride around at the team I was working with from Milwood United Methodist Church. There were the Three Musketeers, Katie, Kristina and Tracy, and Steve, Kristina's Dad, and myself. Steve was the real workhorse of the operation, he had the most experience with home improvement and was past the point in his life when he felt like a kid needing instruction. Around us, our eyes looking up at out handiwork, the yard was littered with beer can, a pile of rocks and a partial trench. This was all better than what was inside the place, where we had not been. We would go in today.

Steve had gotten the next assignments from the Appalachia Service Project staff and we had two things to work on today. First, the trench needed to be completed and the rocks and drain placed into it. Second, someone, a few of us probably, needed to go into the home and fix some of the ceiling which had been damaged.

On the first day, we went into the house. The only water in the place was from a garden hose which had been jammed into a natural spring higher up the mountain and at the end of the hose, they had attached a kitchen faucet, which they dropped in the sink under the open window the green hose came through. They had handled the issue with no water in the bathroom by knocking out the bottom of the toilet and removing any plumbing beneath. Until the day with the new assignments, this was my last time in the house. I hoped it would be my last time.

Steve had already decided he and Kristina and Katie would be working on the trench. This meant, like it or not, Tracy and I would be returning to the interior of the house.

We grabbed a wrecking bar and a hammer and walked up to the front door. We politely told the family we would like to help them get some new drywall up on their ceiling, if they would show us the way. They directed us through the house to the girls bedroom in the back. We ignored the musty, fetid, stagnate air of the space, while we looked up at the brown stripes of water damage. We figured out how much we would need to take down, covered the items in the room so they would become anymore soiled. We asked if we could open the. Back door, which would give us better air and make it easier to go in an out. When the mother opened it, it was like breathing in air from spring valley.

With a little work, we found the edge of the dry wall tile we needed to remove and started pilling it down from the rafters. It was then Tracy brought to my attention something else in the room. On the walls, on the windowsill and now moving about the ceiling were long black ants. What ever we were doing was agitating them.

We stepped out and called to Steve. He came in looked around, pulled the drywall board down enough to look at the insulation, which was stuck to it. He then told us, not only were we removing the damage, but we were removing an ants nest. I have never heard of or seen on in a ceiling like that. I was even less excited about this task than before, but I wasn't going to show it. He recommended we get some ant spray and take it down in easy to manage sections.

In a few moments, I was back beneath what I knew was an infested ceiling and Tracy stood beside me with a can do Raid in her hand. Then, on go, I pried the two foot by three foot section we had cut loose, down from the ceiling. Immediately the air was filled with spray. I turn my head and started toward the door. A pace which dramatically picked up what the stream of ants begin curling around the board and onto my gloved hands. I also began yelling at Kristina, who was a little too close to the back door. Out of my way, out of my way, out of my way. I hope you do not read that with ever more high pitched voice, which may or may not have been there. I will say, my panic was clear enough that Kristina quickly moved.

The ants and scrap went into the garbage pile. I then had to flick a few ants off of me, but there was no flicking the heebies or the jeebies. For the remainder of day every bead of sweat became an ant. Every time my shirt rubbed me I jumped. I was convinced those long black beasts were all over me. They wouldn't leave my mind until I got a shower.