Commentoria!
Eww. OTOH, protein. OTOH, ewww. Ants. So annoying.
Yuck! I don't mess around with ants. We get pavement ants in our basement yearly and I don't hestitate to call the bug man. I am too sqeamish I guess.
Meh, some people eat them dipped in chocolate. Though, ants annoy the shit out of me. In the rainy season we get them coming in the house and I get so furious at the stupid little line of critters. My dumbass dogs eat rocks but not ants. Sigh.
Ewww. Sheepish Annie recently posted about spraying a mixture of water and vinegar around the windows and doors and kitchen counters, it keeps the ants away. And she readily admits she is not an immaculate housekeeper. Maybe you should try that.
at least you got your protein with your cereal? ;o)
I deal with ants all the time (I live in an old house in the South). Vinegar will keep them away for a while but either they become acclimated to it or it wears off. Peppermint will also keep them away for a while.
One of the bug-spray companies used to make a clove-oil based spray that was super effective, but I've not seen it for sale for a couple years; I suppose some idiot huffed it and died and they had to take it off the market.
One thing you might try is scouting around outside the house to see where they are coming in and either trying to block the opening or putting the repellent/killer right there.
Another product I use a lot is called Terro; it's little bait stations with a corn syrup / borax mixture. Supposedly the ants eat it and take it back to the nest and it kills the whole nest. At the very least it serves as a diversion - the ants go to the bait instead of to my food.
I will say once you've had "waterbugs" (which is what nice people call those big American Cockroaches) ants don't look quite so bad.
So I assume Tupperware just found a new customer?
Ants suck. Good luck with that.
Now wait, are these the tiny little bitty ants, or the big, crunchy carpenter ants? The former don't bother me; they're in our bathroom (uh, but not the kitchen, hello) but the big ones are gah-yuck. Not in the same way that spiders are gah-yuck, because those two extra legs seem to make all the difference, but because I can't just squish one with my thumb and be done with it. If I can see its mandibles from way up here, I don't want it touching my stuff.
Back in her "I'M A BRAVE HUNTER AND WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE!" phase, Packet lived for killing and eating spiders. She tried to save me from carpenter ants, too, but I think they must have some cat-repellant spray glands or something, because she'd make a face after getting too close to the ant and then just stare at it while it marched away.
Then Mister moved in and established his presence as the alpha male, which meant that Packet could no longer hunt the spiders for me even though Mister is the world's WORST hunter (*bat!* *wait* *yawn*). I hope I can get her back into her old hunter mode, but I've only seen one spider and it wasn't a scary one.
Do you know what a big deal is it that I just said I saw a spider that didn't scare me?
Yeah, the vinegar wash alone didn't work for me either. What does seem to work is washing down everything near a window, door, or crack in the wall (including the cellar ceiling near the walls to the kitchen) to remove ant scent marks, and spraying Raid near the same places both inside and outside. And making sure no plants touch the walls so they don't get a free ride up the wall.
Commenting by HaloScan
