This is really beginning to bug me

I have regaled you before with tales of ants infesting my mailbox and gumming up my old air conditioner's electricals. My erratic blogging habits apparently sidetracked me from mentioning that (a) the little buggers reappear in my mailbox periodically, roughly once a year; and (b) since having the new A/C installed two years ago, I have had to have the contacter replaced not once, but twice, for the same reason: a horde of ants intent committing suicide inside the unit. I now keep the A/C surrounded with ant bait and periodically blast the area with Raid as a preventive measure; at roughly $200 a pop for the service call and the parts, skimping on ant poison would be the epitome of false economy.

But now, it appears that my success in keeping them out of the A/C has sent them looking for other innovative and inconvenient places to die, and they found one a couple of months ago: The GFCI electrical outlet I installed last year in the outdoor outlet box on my deck. I discovered this one morning when I found the electric outlet in the bathroom was dead (it's downline from the outdoor outlet and thus protected by the GFCI). My first thought was that moisture had gotten into the outlet past the gasket and tripped the breaker – that used to happen at my house in New York. So I checked the breaker in the electric panel (which hadn't tripped), and then went outside to reset the GFCI. But I had a bad feeling about it as soon as I flipped open the spring-loaded cover and found the whole outlet swarming with tiny ants. And sure enough, the big red reset button... didn't. I tried it several times, and no dice; that circuit was permanently interrupted. I cussed out the ants, and sprayed'em with Raid (I need to buy stock in the company), and my only outside outlet (not to mention the bathroom outlet) has been dead ever since.

Until yesterday, when the weather, for a change, was temporarily not 98 degrees, and I could stand to work outside for half an hour. I yanked out the dead outlet, installed a new one in its place, and then smeared so much caulk around the whole electrical box and the edges of the gasket, I'll probably have to take a recip saw to it if I ever have to remove it again. With luck, maybe it'll even keep the ants out. A GFCI outlet isn't nearly as pricey as an A/C contacter – and it doesn't require a $79 service call (I'm actually fairly handy with small electrical repairs) – but the whole thing is really beginning to bug me.