bug off.
I. am. so. incredibly. sick. of. ants.
I seriously think they've built a giant, buzzing metropolis in our yard. Unfortunately, this often means home invasion. We've had to move our cats' food dishes several times because we have woken up in the morning to find a highway of ants heading to and fro. We've also had the displeasure of finding ants swarming hairballs. Last week we had Terminix come to spray the house inside and the perimeter outside. The cats and I had to leave the house for 3 hours while this happened, which I wouldn't have minded except that the cats didn't seem too pleased.
Unfortunately, the guy didn't tell me until he was almost done spraying that he was going to be unable to spray the living room due to our fishtank. It would have been nice if they had mentioned this previously (like when we called or when he first got here so that I would have time to cover it with saran wrap before posionous gases were dispersing in our house). Unfortunately, the living room is where most of the problems have occurred. But he said that if we had more problems, they would just come right back out and spray again.
We didn't worry about it for a few days. A few, fabulous, ant-free days. The past couple days, we have seen small traces of ants. They've seemed to have formed a fairly straight line, but there were too few of them to really figure out where it went. Well, I just got back from the grocery store and walked in to find a slightly larger line of ants. Headed to the pantry. And the cereal boxes.
We will call Terminix to come again and make sure that they can spray the living room this time, but let me tell you how much I am not looking forward to spending three hours away from the house with the cats again. Something more has to be done outside, or they are just going to keep coming back.
I am so disgusted. And irritated. And fed up.
Genevieve said:
eeeeeeeeeeeew! We had a serious ant problem in the duplex. It was AWFUL! And the thing that sucked the most was even though we had the Orkin guy treating both the inside AND the outside, they never went away completely.
The one thing I was always thankful of, though, was that they were tiny little sugar ants. I remember the massive carpender ants that used to be in my parents house from time to time. I wouldn't have been able to handle that. Those suckers were like 1/2 inch long... and they CRUNCHED when you squished them.
*SHUDDER*
Posted on August 10, 2005 08:12 PMAbigail said:
A friend of mine has had luck with boric acid powder on the edges of her house to keep the ants house. It's non toxic too!
I hate ants too. Blech.
Posted on August 10, 2005 08:31 PMJules said:
Try mixing 1/2 baking soda & 1/2 icing sugar, and sprinkle it where you think they are coming in or have a house. The icing sugar will attact them, and the baking soda will make them expand and blow up and die. Sure, it's not the most humane way to get rid of them, but they are really annoying, and it works.
Posted on August 10, 2005 09:20 PMjes. said:
i had ant problems like that when i lived in florida. the only thing that seems to break the little chemical trail they leave for each other and keeps them away is .. clorox. use it liberally on tile and vinyl floors, and use it diluted on any surface they traverse - walls, thresholds, baseboards .. pretty much everywhere. careful not to fade any carpeting, however, or, like, your sofa.
this is, after all, the 21st century - time for all-out chemical warfare!
Posted on August 11, 2005 04:23 AMJulie said:
We had a serious problem with ants in our townhouse in Sunnyvale - maybe it was one big ant farm before they built houses and such?
Anyway, we had Terminix, too, and they sprayed right by the fish tank with no problems. We didn't have to leave or anything, either. Maybe we had the diet ant spray. ;)
Good luck!
Posted on August 11, 2005 08:14 AMalison said:
How's this for an all-encompassing answer?
Gen: thank goodness I have never seen anything here but teeny tiny black ants. Texas ants are much scarier.
Abigail: Boric acid powder? Where does one get that?
Jules: Since we can't tell at all where outside they are coming in, and since I don't think spreading icing on the ground in a house full of cats is a good idea, I tried just putting some baking soda around the areas. May be working. Need longer to determine. :)
Jes: Clorox is a great idea after getting RID of the ants, but first I need to figure out how to get them to stop coming in! They keep coming in different places, so I don't think just getting rid of the trail is going to help quite yet.
Julie: Crazy! They said I should leave for a MINIMUM of 3 hours. And when I got back, I could tell why. Major noxious fumes that I had to air out for awhile. I don't think I would want to chance it with the fish. That's weird though. I wonder if we did get different treatments. Did the spraying help?
Posted on August 11, 2005 10:51 PMMelodie said:
hi! Michael figured out that when he doesn't water the grass outside, the ants come in looking for water. They come for the water and stay for the cereal. So, he started watering the grass and we haven't had a problem since. We'll get the occasional ant, but it's nothing serious. Also I bought tupperware for my cereal and I put all the crackers in zip loc bags (that's just in case).
Posted on August 12, 2005 03:35 PMalison said:
Unfortunately, we've been running our sprinklers twice a day lately since it has been so hot. :/ And it seems that no matter how well we wrap up food, the ants find Something that they want to eat.
Today it was my cactus plant.
Posted on August 12, 2005 03:44 PM