*&(@#$%

The last thing you need to see at 3am on your way to bed after a very long day is a full-scale ant invasion of your kitchen.

The ants weren't there at 1am when I came home.  Either I somehow didn't notice for half an hour while standing in the kitchen or the ants only discovered the area after I came home.  It's possible one of the boxes I brought in from outside had some ants on it, and the ants on the box discovered the kitchen trash. 

The ant activity was a mix of a tightly focused trail and an unusually large swath of explorers.  Perhaps this is what the early stages of an ant invasion look like... new food has been discovered, so there's probably more food nearby.  It's worth their while to search around for it.

I'm still stunned that a single ant can lead to an invasion of thousands in a span of two hours.  They're amazing creatures except when they're in your own house.

I spent an hour cleaning the floor with cleaners that chemically tell the ants to fuck off and setting up bait traps along their path.  Woohoo.