It feels as if ants are taking over our house.
OK, that's an exaggerating, but there sure is a steady stream of them coming into the kitchen.
After returning from a visit to my parent's I noticed ants on the counter.
I had to laugh when My Bigger Half suggested I brought them home with me, rather than they were here before I got home.
After all, he hadn't seen them until I got home.
He laughingly accepted that I didn't bring them, after I showed him the path they followed from the front door to the counter.
I took several approaches to getting rid of them:
Well, I didn't make the time to research what to do about them, just relying on my knowledge of pest control.
I didn't go into the crawl space to fight them at their source, or to even locate their source.
In desperation I let My Bigger Half buy ant bait, and that did the trick.
Cleaning the counter and sink didn't work, but it did make it easier to find them and squish them.
A clean counter also improved my chances of deterring them with my sprays.
I finally quit squishing them so I could see where they were coming from, and ultimately where they were going to.
Smart, huh.
They were emerging from the wall beside the front door, marching across the floor, up the cabinet, across the counter, and disappearing into the dishwasher cabinet (not the machine, but the cabinet that holds the machine).
Once their path was learned I knew where to spray, and spray I did.
The spray worked, at least in the sense they didn't use that path anymore.
Those persistent little ants instead went around.
The bigger my spray area the longer they had to march to get around the spot to reach their destination.
I don't know why I didn't Google a better solution than ant bait, but I didn't.
Interestingly, as I sat to write this article I did some research and found wonderful solutions.
Now you have those solutions I didn't use.
I did learn that my vinegar solutions might have worked if it had been closer to a 50:50 solution of vinegar:water, or even straight vinegar.
I won't use the bleach that was recommended in several places.
I would have tried using Borax, mixed with sugar, if I'd known about it then.
Chili powder was another "natural" way of killing ant colonies, an approach I'd be willing to try too.
What kind of ants did we have? I don't know.
They were small, marched in single file, were social (they'd stop to communicate with other ants they were passing), and persistent.
We haven't had them for almost a month now, so it seems we indeed rid our home of the ants.
Yaaay!
OK, that's an exaggerating, but there sure is a steady stream of them coming into the kitchen.
After returning from a visit to my parent's I noticed ants on the counter.
I had to laugh when My Bigger Half suggested I brought them home with me, rather than they were here before I got home.
After all, he hadn't seen them until I got home.
He laughingly accepted that I didn't bring them, after I showed him the path they followed from the front door to the counter.
I took several approaches to getting rid of them:
- cleaning up the counter and sink
- squishing them
- feeding my worms with the compost that was stored on the counter
- spraying vinegar water on the counter and along the marching path
- spraying Kit's Magic Kleaner on the counter and along the marching path
- sweetly asking the ants to go away
- begging the ants to go away
- sprinkling corn starch at the entry/exit point
- using MaxAttrax Ant Bait
Well, I didn't make the time to research what to do about them, just relying on my knowledge of pest control.
I didn't go into the crawl space to fight them at their source, or to even locate their source.
In desperation I let My Bigger Half buy ant bait, and that did the trick.
Cleaning the counter and sink didn't work, but it did make it easier to find them and squish them.
A clean counter also improved my chances of deterring them with my sprays.
I finally quit squishing them so I could see where they were coming from, and ultimately where they were going to.
Smart, huh.
They were emerging from the wall beside the front door, marching across the floor, up the cabinet, across the counter, and disappearing into the dishwasher cabinet (not the machine, but the cabinet that holds the machine).
Once their path was learned I knew where to spray, and spray I did.
The spray worked, at least in the sense they didn't use that path anymore.
Those persistent little ants instead went around.
The bigger my spray area the longer they had to march to get around the spot to reach their destination.
I don't know why I didn't Google a better solution than ant bait, but I didn't.
Interestingly, as I sat to write this article I did some research and found wonderful solutions.
Now you have those solutions I didn't use.
I did learn that my vinegar solutions might have worked if it had been closer to a 50:50 solution of vinegar:water, or even straight vinegar.
I won't use the bleach that was recommended in several places.
I would have tried using Borax, mixed with sugar, if I'd known about it then.
Chili powder was another "natural" way of killing ant colonies, an approach I'd be willing to try too.
What kind of ants did we have? I don't know.
They were small, marched in single file, were social (they'd stop to communicate with other ants they were passing), and persistent.
We haven't had them for almost a month now, so it seems we indeed rid our home of the ants.
Yaaay!