We’re heading out tomorrow, leaving South Carolina and heading up to Charlotte, North Carolina. We were supposed to head over to Fort Fisher on the coast, but a flat tire yesterday has us diverting. Outlaw Offroad (the garage who installed our rooftop tent in Alabama) also has a few locations in North Carolina, one of which is in Charlotte. It’s only about an hour away from us, so I figured we might as well go with someone who knows off road vehicles, who also happens to be a business we had a great experience with before.

Since we’re heading to Charlotte tomorrow, it means today was clean out the truck day. Every week or two, everything gets pulled out of the front of the truck (the back is packed like tetris blocks, so it rarely gets cleaned out). I usually do it the day before we’re packing up to switch campsites. Today was that day and let me just say, “Ew, gross, yuck, revolting.”

Let me start off by stating defenders are not well known for being sealed up. In fact, most defender owners might consider something to be wrong if the truck didn’t leak water inside. This means I wasn’t surprised when I saw ants a couple days ago climbing along the floor in the front of the truck. There’s no food kept up there, it’s all kept in a tub in the trunk area or outside at the campsite. So, I didn’t think anything of it, just killed the ones I saw and went on with my day.

I should have paid closer attention. I should have investigated a bit more because today I found something disgusting. At some point in time, ants decided to start a colony under the floor mats of the second row. The second row doors leak water at the bottom, so as we were cleaning out today I lifted up the floor mats to see how wet they were and to my disgust there were hundreds of ants and eggs everywhere.

I could understand why they’d be under there if there was food or something, but the kids have actually kept it pretty clean back there after Zoie left food under her seat back when we first started our trip and she ended up with maggots in her things. I even checked the food tub in the trunk and there was no sign of ants in there. So if there’s no food source, why are they building a colony here?!

I don’t know why the little buggers thought building a colony under the floor mats would be a good idea. All they ended up with was being bleached to death. I pulled out both floor mats and laid them out on the ground to dry. Then I took bleach spray and killed all the little pests and wiped them away with paper towels.

I’ll definitely be paying closer attention to any ant trespassers I see in the future. I do not want to ever have a repeat of what I had to clean out today. Now to repack everything so we can be on our way in the morning. First though, I’ve got to get all the laundry done and get myself to bed. I promised #2 we could wake up early and go fishing before the other children get up and we have to be on our way. Let’s hope he catches something otherwise all the effort of getting up early will be for naught, and let’s be honest I’m a much nicer mom when I’ve gotten my sleep.