Regular readers might remember that the two previous summers of my life were marked by the deaths of infant birds in the exhaust vent of my bathroom. It would start with the smell, continue on with the flies and then I'd cook the rotting corpse by running the bathroom heater for 24 hours a day. It was great fun each time it happened.
This fall we thought we'd be very clever and have the entire vent covered in mesh wire. No birds, no maggots. Win!
Well, at lest it seemed like a win at the time and indeed, until Thursday it was. Thursday while out urging my dogs to piddle already, I noticed big black ants crawling up the side of my house and on the drain pipe which leads to the roof of the former bird death trap. I thought, "Huh. Ants."
That's as far as I went with that thought, because people? I did not want to know.
As a matter of fact on Facebook (If we are not facebook friends we should be- follow the button at the top.) I posted: There are ants crawling on my house. What does this mean? Feel free to lie to me.
I went to bed Thursday night determined to ignore what was now becoming a gnawing concern. I woke up Friday morning blissfully unaware of the army of heave-ho's moving in.
I got into the shower. I found that I was not alone in the shower. There were two ants in the shower with me and I think we can agree that this is not the sort of shower company a girl wants. I slugged them a bottle of shampoo and tried not to panic. A coincidence! It was just a coincidence. The rest of the house would be ant free!!
That was the lie I told myself until I got downstairs and saw dozens of ants on the walls, the windows and the floor. First I panicked and called my husband who is conveniently away for six weeks.
"Come home right now!" I demanded. "There are ants everywhere and I am freaking out!"
Reader, he did not come home.
I did the only thing a defenseless housewife could do. I went to the hardware store and got enough ant traps to kill every ant in my town. I set them all over the house and tried to comfort the children.
"We want to move!" cried Rebecca.
"Who would want to buy our ant filled house?" I wailed back.
We spent the day out of the house, leaving the ants to have at their poison. Saturday morning there were fewer ants, but enough to have me worried that the traps weren't working. Sunday morning we only saw three and then this morning I saw one- and nothing since.
I think I won the battle. I imagine somewhere in the hot dry earth around my house is a bunker of insect death. A pile of ants defeated by $50 worth of ant poison. I miss winter already.
3 comments:
I read your shared good news and bad news. It is such awesome and really amazing thoughts of both news.
Ahhh...apparently ants are having parties on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. I'm having ant problems too. My solution? Surface spray. And putting the honey jar in a dish of water. And then putting the icing-encrusted zoo animals from a cake on top of the honey jar.
And on the surface spray thing, we also killed a cockroach. I was very excited to know the spray worked so well.
We have the exact same problem every year when it gets warm. We use this and it works great. http://www.terro.com/products.php We use the traps and the perimeter spread. You will see them go away. It's safe to use when you have children and pets. I think the active ingredient is Borax which we have also used to get rid of ants and that works fine too. Good luck!
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