Early one morning I’m shooting out of the birth canal into a harshly lit world. The stares of the doctor and nurses intimidate me and I pretend to be blind to everyone standing more than six inches away from me. Eventually someone breaks what has become an awkward silence.

Welcome. We have greatly anticipated your arrival. Would you care to be cleansed with holy water before we escort you to your accommodations?

It doesn’t seem like I’ve heard that right, so I poke a tiny newborn finger into the cheesy recesses of an ear and try to look attentive.

Taco shells on sale in Grocery, a disembodied someone breathes. Woof, bark some dogs down the street. I find myself wanting to get this part over with. My puckered little cheeks quiver, my miniature mouth opens and my screech leaps out to rend the air. And just like that, I’m awake.

There is relevant news on the radio. I lie under the weight of all my dirty laundry, one step away from defeat. You know how that goes. This world is a frustrating goddamn place. The only possible motivation for leaving my warm sarcophagus is Dandy Blend. I go into the room with the out-of-tune piano and the cracked mannequin legs and remember what a teakettle is. Then I distinguish a plastic bag of Dandy Blend from a plastic bag of some other brown powder and grab a dirty spoon. I do not secure the soymilk creamer from the refrigerator. I’m not ready to open that door.

During my thirty-minute shower I ask the Baby Jesus for help. He is expecting my query. According to His logic, if I can enjoy thirty minutes of hot water on the back of my neck, I can handle the problem that lurks in the refrigerator. Lots of people have it worse. I’m used to this sort of reasoning from Him. Not helpful. Dry, dragged into filthy clothing and launched into the kitchen, I declare myself awake and ready to see how far things have gone.This is how far things have gone:

It’s a picture of a pile of ants. They’re dead. The other ants in the photo might be dead too, or they might be moving slowly because they are walking in the freezer. Let’s move in closer, shall we?

What we have here is a pile of corpses and some stragglers around the pile. Perhaps the stragglers are trying to get away- making a break for the hole in the seal before they are mowed down in their prime. Or perhaps they are hoping to reach the pile, to join hands with their comrades and walk through the gates of Heaven together. Believe me, I’ve asked the Baby Jesus about this many times. He compels me to find the answer on my own. So I stare at the ants, and my sister stares at them, and she takes these incredible photos (because she’s very skilled that way) and together, we watch the casualties mount.

It’s all extremely disturbing. Just imagine: first thing in the morning, when you want to ease into your daily toil with a hot drink, being confronted with an ant infestation in your refrigerator. You’ve put it off but you can’t avoid it any longer, you have to open that door. You must get the soymilk creamer for the Dandy Blend that constitutes your only reason for living. When you do, you see ants swarming out of invisible holes, ants squished against cold white plastic. A mysterious pool of scummy water on the bottom shelf with ants floating in it. Ants piled up three inches high on top of the freezer door.

This does not encourage the appetite.

Ants aren’t like snow, they don’t melt away when springtime comes. They must be removed with paper towels and forklifts. When my turn came, I did it alone, and in silence. I couldn’t bear to have anyone watch me flicking wet ant bodies from my finger tips out the back door and shuddering when I got them in my hair. My sister was bold and sprightly when she cleaned up the ants, with Neil Diamond playing at top volume. She wore a fancy apron and kept making a face like someone was plucking out her nose hairs. I cheered. It was still funny back then. I guess we thought the problem would somehow fix itself.

We certainly never saw this coming:

Where did they get that?

People, we need help. Not advice, but real help from a team of experts. We are outnumbered. We are demoralized. This has been going on for at least four months now. The situation has gone through all the stages of disgusting and moved into the surreal. We need someone to come and look at our dead ants and tell us just what the hell is going on here. Is this a punishment? An object lesson? Does it start making sense at some point? If we understand the deeper truth in the situation, will the ants go away, maybe move into someone else’s refrigerator?

Just look at my lovely sister describing the seriousness of the problem. She’s trying to be brave, instead of collapsing into a heap on the kitchen floor.

You can almost see her lower lip trembling in this picture. It’s enough to break your heart.