Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Ants!

We have ants. In our house. Ew.

Ants do not generally bother me, when they are outside, doing their ant business, like building ant hills and carrying off small bits of picnic food. In my kitchen, however, they are bothersome.

I found a few over by the coffee pot about 2 weeks ago. After looking further, I realized they had traveled up into the cabinets and into our salt shaker. Yes, I said "into". Ew.

We bought some little ant traps, which look like small plastic spaceships for the ants to travel back to their mother-planet in. "Look there, Jacque, it eez our spaceship. We go home now. Bonjour!" The trap has some mysterious "stuff" in it that gets on the ant's little toes and they carry it back to the ant headquarters, where it gets on everyone and kills them all. That's the theory at least.

We put a trap by the coffeemaker. The next day...no ants. Cool. That was easy. A little too easy...

About a week later (they must have been planning out their next attack), I discovered a trail of ants coming up from the floor on the other side of the kitchen, past the dog food (luckily they couldn't breach the dog food containers) and into the sink. I basically came home to a thick black trail of ants from floor to sink. Ew. Ew! EW!

I squashed and cursed. Cursed and squashed. Put a trap on the counter. Put one on the floor. I had to go meet a friend for dinner, so I did that and came back to find no ants and a chewed up ant trap. My dog had decided that the spaceship looked tasty. Quick call to Animal Hospital. Vomiting? No. Diahrrea? No. Lethargy? No. Well, yes, but no more than normal. Dog is okay. Whew.

The ants retreated for a while, but last night they were back, although their numbers had diminished. I squashed and cursed some more and left for dinner with hubby and Junior.

After dinner, I moved my wrapper that my food had been sitting on and there was an ant underneath. AN ANT! I didn't see any other ants on the table, just the one, under my FOOD wrapper. Say it with me folks....EW!!!!!!!

"Hah-hah! My name eez Pierre. I jump in zee purse and come to dinner vith jou. Zurprise!" (because we all know that ants speak with a bad French accent)

I tried not to think about it too much. Ew. Ew! EW! When we got home, the ants had retreated. Or maybe they had taken off in their spaceship. Who knows. I didn't look too hard.

As I was getting ready to go to bed last night, I pulled open the covers, got in, was arranging my pillows and there he was...a lone ant. IN MY BED. Trying to look casual. EEEEEWWWW!

Loving Husband saw my horror and before I could stop him, he flicked the ant across the room. "NO!" I screamed, "KILL HIM!"

I could almost hear the chuckling as the ant got away clean.

That's it. It's on. Me versus the Ants. Stay tuned...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try Terro ant killer. It's not as tidy as ant traps (you pour little syrupy dollops of sweet poison onto cardboard squares and leave them on your counters), but the ants really seem to like it. Sometimes you'll see them circling the liquid, lapping it up to take back to their nest and kill the other ants. It's hard not to gloat.

Mojavi said...

I was going to tell you the same thing... Every spring we get attacked b ants.. TERRO works!

Cagey (Kelli Oliver George) said...

I have heard Terro works, too. That's what my sister uses. I have found a few ants here and there, but I kill them manually. do you have peony bushes, by the way? That's definitely an attractor.

Goofy Girl said...

Thank you, fellow soldiers. I will add Terro to my arsenal of ant-fighting weapons. Power to the humans!

Anonymous said...

Ive got them too, here at the duplex. They do say ants cohabitate with termites! I wouldnt fool around with traps, especially is it only works for one season, and they return every spring. Get a pest control guy out there and spray, in fact do a check on termites. Thats a real estate disaster if you dont catch it!

mboardman