Ants!

We have ants.

I hear you saying, "So, what?"

I don't mind ants that much myself.  Usually, if you have ants, you don't have cockroaches and that seems like a good trade.

Until they get the upper hand.  And boy, do they have the upper hand in this house.  They are everywhere.  In the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedrooms.  In the study.  In the downstairs toilet.  In the hallway.

For weeks and weeks, there has been a battle raging in this house.  We are putting away our food stuffs religiously.  We keep as clean as possible with three little ones.  Trash goes away immediately.  Diapers get washed right away.

But sometimes it just baffles me what these critters like.  Plastics, electronics, and me.

Yes, me.

Last night I woke up because I had these little sharp pains on my arms and back.  When I switched on the light, I found about 50 of the little beasties in my bed, right next to my pillow.  Some ten or so were deliriously stuck in my flesh.  Talk about a waking nightmare!

I'm not sure if my scent makes them aggressive or if my milky boobs attract them or what it is that lures them all the way to the bedroom.  To my side of the bed.  Into my underwear drawer. (No, it's all clean stuff in there.)

But if I'm not available, they'll take the kids.  They really like Jacob and I hate, hate, hate to find them in his crib and in his diapers.  They bite him too and he's covered with little bumps, just like Alan and I.  David they seem to find not so interesting, nor Doug.

We've tried all the usual soft methods, from baking powder to apple vinegar.  It seems to help but how to get baking powder on the ant roads on the walls?  They get shooed away from one corner, they find another entry into the house.  They are everywhere.  I estimate that I kill about a thousand of them every day, by wiping off countertops, picking them off beds and out of underwear and diapers.  Now they finally found the dirty laudry hamper and they even like it empty.  They spill out of the pressure mechanism of the pressure cooker.  They are in the humidifier and in the coffee machine.  They are ubiquitous and they think they are winning this war.

Hah. You thought wrong, you chitinous fiends.

We are flying to Germany on Saturday and Doug will come back on Thursday morning.  He will bring chemical weapons with him, multitudes of them.  Do not search any longer for WMDs in Iraq because we'll have them right here.  The boys will be gone, Doug's out of the house all day, so the chemical warfare can begin.

I will be able to put on underwear without picking off wriggling black bodies one day. I will.

Comments

[Michael]

Ugh! Good luck. I found chemical weapons to be reasonably effective in deterring a couple of ant invasions, but even in our southern Maryland climate it was never this bad. If ants ever make it into my friggin' bed, I imagine I'd set its legs into some kind of liquid containers. I'm sure your household isn't lacking in enterprise.

[Will Baird]

First apartment. It looked fantastic and big. I had moved in and on the second night...

COCKROACHES!

FRACKIN HUGE COCKROACHES!

AND THEY WERE CUDDLING IN BED WITH ME!

These roaches were over two inches long.
They were huge. Mutants. Evil.

I killed the ones that wanted intimacy. I tried the less than nasty interventions. Then...broke down when a new set wanted to get intimate.

I got multiple cans of chemical weapons. Just used them and crashed at my first wife's parents' place. When I came back, bazillions of them dead all over. One was twitching and dying when I got back. Melissa was with me. She was VERY disturbed by my very loudly taunting expression of delight as it died.

She didn't have them crawl all over her when she was sleeping.

I have happily used chemical weapons since.

[Bernard Guerrero]

Heh, heh, heh. Welcome to the dark side, Claudia. I'm with Will, I generally frown on finding pleasure in the misery of other creatures, but for certain arthropods I make an exception.

I have to say, finding large numbers of ants in bed would highly disturbing. The couple of times we've had them in a house, we've gone for the traps that lure them in and dose them with a chemical they drag back to the colony. Seems to be effective, and you don't have to cover your entire living space.

"I don't mind ants that much myself. Usually, if you have ants, you don't have cockroaches and that seems like a good trade."

Really? I wonder why. Competition for food? The ants eat the roaches one little bite at a time? And how do the earwigs feel about all this?

Bernard "The Ant Bully" Guerrero

[Traveller]

Dear Claudia:

I think that it is the heat that draws them out and forces them on the move. To your bed, I don't understand unless it IS your milky white...lol

Be that as it may, the best poisons are the kind where the take it back to the nest. In the alterative, the basic sprays are effective, especially if you want to see them immediately dead, and, if you can find the nest, that's always fun to spray directly...playing, as it were, a mini-Hitler...I know you might find this reference somewhat offensive, but on occasion we'll stand outside around a bunch of ants and I'll declare myself Heinrich and do a slaughter, trains and all to mini-death camps...(grin). Well, at least my neighbors laugh.

Actually, I'm not too bad with ants. As a child I'd watch my sister take buttered bread, smash it face down on a trail of ants a couple of times, and then she'd eat it to horrify us. My brother retains an actual, full blown, phobia over ants...he goes crazy when they are near.

Me, I had some on me last night while watching Munich, the Spielberg movie, and Dana was less than happy that I just let them crawl around on me. So I killed them, but felt badly about it...lol

Best Wishes, Traveller

[Brian D]

I'd like to second the use of the traps that provide food to the ants so that they take it back their nests. When we moved into our current home 2+ years ago, we had *bad* ant problems. They were swarming into the kitchen before we moved in ... long lines of ants so thick you couldn't distinguish individuals. We placed the disc-type traps along their scent path and eventually they start wandering in to get the food. They take the stuff back and it wipes out the whole nest.

We've had intermittent ant issues in the past two springs, but nothing like that first year, despite our son's efforts at squirreling food away in any hidden location he can find.

Another advantage is that the spray is not going everywhere in the house, so it probably limits what people are being exposed to. Potentially, depending on where the ants are, you can place the traps in unreachable (for children) spots.

Not sure what you might have available to you, but the sort of traps I'm describing are similar to these: http://www.killsbugsdead.com/fop_dc_ab.asp

[Traveller]

Just a little follow up on the Ant question.

I've just seen an article indicating that Ants get around and know where they are going by counting their steps.

Interestingly, if you put leg extensions on ants in an experment, attach stilts to their legs as it were, they can no longer find their way back to their nest...they always overshoot the mark...apparently because they are counting their steps.

Hummmmmm

Best Wishes, Traveller

[Oliver]

Only large combative ants will take on adult roaches. Eggs and nymphs are open game, however.

Besides food, ants need water and minerals. Possibly they are after your sweat. There are substances that make surfaces too slippery even for ants. These are a modern alternative to putting your bedstead into buckets of vinegar.