F@!$%#ing Ants
I don’t know if ants actually have an Oedipal complex – I mean, they do have just the one queen, and she’s mating with somebody to lay all those eggs. Is there insect incest going on? Are all ants little inbred freaks? Whatever their parentage, I hate the little bastards because they’re irritating and impossible to live with. These are the things I've been pondering recently…why, because there are motherfucking ants overrunning my house.
We've always had a, um, healthy ant population in and around the Puff house. When we had our shower fixed eight years ago, the poor dude breaking out the old, leaking tub had to run for his life from the biting swarm of ants that erupted out of the wall as soon as he broke through the tile. Since moving in we've had to keep all food in air-tight containers or the fridge or else it will be a writhing black mass of ants.
On the up side, having your walls infested with Argentine ants apparently keeps the walls from being infested with termites and all of our termite inspections have come back clean. The ants also helpfully disposed of some rat carcasses for us before they could smell up the place when our neighbor was poisoning rats.
On the down side, ants. Motherfucking ants every-fucking-where.
Sometimes I water my inside houseplants and the ants come boiling out holding their eggs aloft because they've built a damn ant hill inside my house. If we leave so much as a crumb out, the next morning we will find the kitchen counter a heaving black sheet of ants. Our trash can is regularly blanketed in a crawling mass of ants – often they appear to be excitedly relocating to this cool new habitat that features a robust food supply and room for a colony!
Nine years of ant warfare.
I used to feel a bit bad about the insect slaughter when we’d spray the invaders with ant dissolving cleaners, or put out a Terro trap and watch them triumphantly carry the glistening drops of liquid death back to the mother ship. I've gotten over it. No matter how many we wipe out, there’s always more. And they are eating my food. MY. FOOD.
Because of the drought, this year has been particularly bad. Besides the usual food attraction, now they are aggressively seeking water. I was attacked on my own toilet one night when I foolishly sat down to pee without turning on the light. Little jerks were biting my butt. That’s right; I can now definitively say that having ants in your pants is indeed a horrible, squirmy experience.
It used to be that we only had a problem when they found some exciting morsel of food, now we have ants wandering through every room of the house searching. We used to lecture the kids about not leaving food unattended because the dogs might steal it, now we can’t leave a plate of food anywhere for more than five minutes because it will be an orgy of ants.
Yes, you’re right, but then we’d be trading one creepy problem for another. Namely, dead boys – both Puff and pup.
Mr. Puff has asthma and I've learned over the years that anything that leaves a chemical residue or lingering fumes is not a good idea unless I want to be rushing him to the nearest ER in the middle of the night. If we kill the ants but he can’t live in the house for two weeks, kinda defeats the purpose. The pup? He licks EVERYTHING. And I mean everything, even things that no other dog on the face of the earth would think are a good idea to lick, he’ll lick it. Don’t want to kill the husband or the dog, so the pesticide spray is out.
We don’t want to poison everything else living around our house either, like the bees, the praying mantis, lizards and birds. Also, I always flash back to an article I read while pregnant with Quokka about a family that had pesticide sprayed all around their house to eliminate ticks, trying to ensure that the mom didn't get Lyme disease while pregnant. Instead, her children had deformities because of the chemicals in the pesticide. Tragic and sad, and permanently raised my alarm level for spraying poison around my house to orange.
Since the pest companies won’t tell me what’s in that crap, only that we would need to leave the house for at least four hours after they spray, I’m not willing to take the chance.
And, yes, we've tried all the natural remedies – Borax does kill them, it does not prevent them from coming in. We've tried all the others too, like the Terro and spray they’re all temporary solutions that flog the latest ant highway, but do nothing about the oncoming swarm. Meanwhile, the land surrounding our house is infested with endless Argentine ant colonies, and when we wipe one out another group goes, “oh look, an empty apartment, let’s move in!”
So, we’ll treat food like radioactive waste (contain that shit!), spray the EcoSmart to melt ants and erase trails (made with cinnamon oil, it smells like a really angry baker attacked the house), build dykes of baking soda (any ant foolish enough to cross the berm does not last long), and send them scurrying home with Terro to wipe out at least one obnoxious nest.
They’ll just keep coming and I’ll keep raging against the mother f!@&#$ing ant machine.
We've always had a, um, healthy ant population in and around the Puff house. When we had our shower fixed eight years ago, the poor dude breaking out the old, leaking tub had to run for his life from the biting swarm of ants that erupted out of the wall as soon as he broke through the tile. Since moving in we've had to keep all food in air-tight containers or the fridge or else it will be a writhing black mass of ants.
On the up side, having your walls infested with Argentine ants apparently keeps the walls from being infested with termites and all of our termite inspections have come back clean. The ants also helpfully disposed of some rat carcasses for us before they could smell up the place when our neighbor was poisoning rats.
On the down side, ants. Motherfucking ants every-fucking-where.
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| That's right! Lock that shit up! Found it on Pinterest - says it came from this place: dumpaday.com |
Nine years of ant warfare.
I used to feel a bit bad about the insect slaughter when we’d spray the invaders with ant dissolving cleaners, or put out a Terro trap and watch them triumphantly carry the glistening drops of liquid death back to the mother ship. I've gotten over it. No matter how many we wipe out, there’s always more. And they are eating my food. MY. FOOD.
Because of the drought, this year has been particularly bad. Besides the usual food attraction, now they are aggressively seeking water. I was attacked on my own toilet one night when I foolishly sat down to pee without turning on the light. Little jerks were biting my butt. That’s right; I can now definitively say that having ants in your pants is indeed a horrible, squirmy experience.
It used to be that we only had a problem when they found some exciting morsel of food, now we have ants wandering through every room of the house searching. We used to lecture the kids about not leaving food unattended because the dogs might steal it, now we can’t leave a plate of food anywhere for more than five minutes because it will be an orgy of ants.
Kill Them, Kill Them All!
I know what you’re thinking. Go ahead, say it… “You could hire a pest control company to spray and, poof, all of your ant problems would disappear in a cloud of pesticide!”Yes, you’re right, but then we’d be trading one creepy problem for another. Namely, dead boys – both Puff and pup.
Mr. Puff has asthma and I've learned over the years that anything that leaves a chemical residue or lingering fumes is not a good idea unless I want to be rushing him to the nearest ER in the middle of the night. If we kill the ants but he can’t live in the house for two weeks, kinda defeats the purpose. The pup? He licks EVERYTHING. And I mean everything, even things that no other dog on the face of the earth would think are a good idea to lick, he’ll lick it. Don’t want to kill the husband or the dog, so the pesticide spray is out.
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| That pointy nose is in EVERYTHING |
We don’t want to poison everything else living around our house either, like the bees, the praying mantis, lizards and birds. Also, I always flash back to an article I read while pregnant with Quokka about a family that had pesticide sprayed all around their house to eliminate ticks, trying to ensure that the mom didn't get Lyme disease while pregnant. Instead, her children had deformities because of the chemicals in the pesticide. Tragic and sad, and permanently raised my alarm level for spraying poison around my house to orange.
Since the pest companies won’t tell me what’s in that crap, only that we would need to leave the house for at least four hours after they spray, I’m not willing to take the chance.
And, yes, we've tried all the natural remedies – Borax does kill them, it does not prevent them from coming in. We've tried all the others too, like the Terro and spray they’re all temporary solutions that flog the latest ant highway, but do nothing about the oncoming swarm. Meanwhile, the land surrounding our house is infested with endless Argentine ant colonies, and when we wipe one out another group goes, “oh look, an empty apartment, let’s move in!”
So, we’ll treat food like radioactive waste (contain that shit!), spray the EcoSmart to melt ants and erase trails (made with cinnamon oil, it smells like a really angry baker attacked the house), build dykes of baking soda (any ant foolish enough to cross the berm does not last long), and send them scurrying home with Terro to wipe out at least one obnoxious nest.
They’ll just keep coming and I’ll keep raging against the mother f!@&#$ing ant machine.
