E-mail, snail mail... ant mail?

So, I get home from work today and check the mailbox as usual. I had hopes for more than just bills and junk, partly because there was no mail yesterday (Columbus Day), and partly because I just joined Netflix and it was possible my first DVDs would show up today.

I pulled out the stack of mail and was going to close the box... when I noticed something odd inside the box. Something moving. Crawling all over the inside of the box and the door.

There was more in there than bills and junk, all right. Ants. Hundreds of tiny ants. This picture was not taken of my mailbox, but it's about what it looked like. Only there were a lot more ants in my mailbox than in this one. (And mine is black, not silver.)


(As an aside, I'm absolutely astounded at what you can find pictures of on Google Images. I just searched for 'ants mailbox', not expecting to get any hits for anything so bizarre. But this was one of four hits, the others all showing ants on the ground beside a mailbox post.)

Well, a few squirts of Raid Ant & Roach Killer later, the ants were no longer swarming, and I swabbed out the mailbox with several wads of paper towels. It's now airing out overnight so hopefully tomorrow my mail won't smell of insecticides.

But what I really want to know is, where the hell did they come from? I simply can't believe I wouldn't have noticed them the last time I picked up the mail -- on Saturday -- which means they must have taken up residence sometime between then and now. I think maybe I'd better take the box off the post this weekend and see if maybe the wood post has a nest in it.

Oh, yeah... the mail did include my Netflix DVDs, as well as my AARP bulletin, a coupon for a free JCPenney fall catalog, and a couple other pieces of junk. Wonder what the folks at Netflix would think if they got back DVDs with ants in the envelopes?