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Friday, June 8, 2012

The ants go marching one by one, hooray, hooray!

I don't know about you, but I have ants.

Well, not me personally. But our condo.

Those teeny-tiny ants. And not a lot, just enough to infuriate a person - namely ME.

I've been told that this is the season for ants. That rain drives the ants indoors or something like that.

I first noticed a couple of ants on my kitchen counter. I didn't freak out.

Yet.

You know how people put a piece of pipe in the window track for safety to prevent the window from being open? Well, we have that in a few of the windows around the condo from the previous owner. (We live on the ground floor.) I took the pipe out and placed it on the counter so I could open the window. Unbeknownst to me, those little buggers where nesting or conducting a meeting or whatever-the-hell ants do together, in the pipe.

Once the pipe was on the counter? All hell broke loose.

Ants everywhere.

THEN I freaked out.

Luckily my sister was over and she helped kill those little suckers.

We realized that they were coming from the pipe.

I grabbed the pipe, ran outside with the pipe in one hand, and bug killer spray in the other. I soaked that pipe inside and out.

Take that you little mother tuckers!

After that, I haven't seen any ants in the kitchen.

We DID but these little numbers....


and spread them throughout the kitchen, pantry and both bathrooms.

What is it, you ask?

Why, it's the "ant" version of the "Roach Motel". Supposedly the ants "check in", but they don't "check out".

Well- I'm sorry to say that MY ants must be awfully particular and want to stay at the Hilton or something because they are totally ignoring these strange little black squares all over my place.

Maybe it's an advertising joke. "Hey, let's make these little black squares with two holes in it, and just TELL people that this attracts ants. Even if they only fall for it once, we've made a sale!"

Yeah.

It hasn't rained in a few days, so I haven't seen any ants. Although I usually see at least one ant a day in our master bath. Either crawling across the sink, or when I'm sitting on the toilet staring at the tiles on the floor. Sure enough - there's an ant.

But the other day, I spied something unusual.

A spider web.

Not that a spider web is unusual in MY house.

But this spider web was under the bathroom cabinet. And it had three teeny tiny DEAD ants stuck in the web.

Am I awful to admit that it made me smile?

Now I'm not a big fan of spiders. Gail from At the Farm can attest to that. But if I got one on my side taking care of the ant problem, I just may keep her around. And I'm going to name her Charlotte.


     
And I'm going to keep her.

Unless she's hairy, big, and black.

Then I'm going to step on her.

12 comments:

Valerie said...

Pat, we have our share of ants. So far though, we've managed to 'dispose' of them outside. We tried those gadgets that were supposed to remove ants but gave up and went back to Nippon. That's a winner in the destruction of ants scenario.

Brian Miller said...

this year so far has been really bad with ants here...was just talking to someone about that yesterday...

Brian Miller said...

i would keep the spider too...as long as they dont invite friends...smiles..

Mike said...

I despise ants. They just get into everything. I've been spraying the foundation of the house regularly and so far this year I've kept them out. Knock on wood.

Gail said...

I name my spiders around the house...they keep down the flies.

A little salt on the window seal may keep the ants from coming in that way. It also works on evil spirits.

Oh, do I have some pictures for you but I'm giving you a rest for now since you have you're own personal spider now.

Ami said...

Boric acid! Not poison... does work. We've had damn ants all over the place, too. Not anymore!!

1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons boric acid
3 cups warm water


Read more: http://www.food.com/recipe/get-rid-of-ants-ants-ants-203233#ixzz1w7t5bcUQ

Unknown said...

I have had to kill 2 big ants in my house in the past 2 weeks. I'm hoping it's the rain that made them pop in for a visit, and that they didn't have time to set up housekeeping before I flushed their carcasses down the toilet!

Anonymous said...

Oy, ants. Once they show up, it takes FOREVER to convince them to leave.
Spiders are much better houseguests.

SquirrelQueen said...

We have never had ants in our house until this year. They were in the kitchen and one bathroom. After weeks of spray, gel, and yes, those black box things they are gone. Or maybe they are just hiding to psyche us out. I'll take spiders any day over ants.

Teresa said...

we had ants in both of our last places, but not this one - and i'm very glad of that. the boric acid stuff really does work but don't freak out if you use it because it will attract them first before it kills them. when i used it last year, i went nutso when i saw the dab of cardboard with millions (seemingly) of little buggers there. once they disappeared, they were gone.

i hate spiders even more...

Carletta said...

When we lived in Virginia we had that problem this time of year. I always used Terro on cotton balls. I would put it under the kitchen sink where the pipes come up and on the window sill.
At school, no poisons allowed, we would spray their paths with Lysol.

Nope, no Charlotte's in this house - regardless! :)

Unknown said...
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