ant, ant, ant, can’t deal with any more ants.
Written on July 11, 2008 by steph
we are overrun with ants (but not the fun kind that tell you all the family gossip) and it’s making our whole household cranky…especially eric, who is typically very even-tempered. they are coming in through joint between the window header and the wall in the dining room, then tracing their way across the dining room wall, through the china cabinet, across the kitchen wall and counter and then either behind the stove or into the sink. in the sink they are then disappearing into a groutless tile grout joint. gah!
we sprayed cedar oil all over the place last night, killing scores of them, but i think they must have a nest in the walls or something. gah! gah! gah!
Filed in: Uncategorized.
Yick! I’d rather have your ants than our spiders…
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/76/Wolf_spider_with_young_in_garden.jpg
(Eric took that picture) But still I sympathize.
This company sells a fantastic natural insecticide under the “general care items” section.
http://www.fowl-play.com/
We go through a bottle of it every summer combating fruit flies. And occasionally to do in a wolf spider from afar if Eric isn’t around to kill it.
Don’t forget boric acid as well. If they have a nest in the walls then you’ll probably have to take Dramatic Steps.
For Erin W: another way to get fruit flies is to put out a dish of vinegar (any type but distilled) with a little dishwashing soap in it. The flies are attracted to the vinegar and are - apparently - too dumb not to land in the liquid. The soap weakens the surface tension enough that the flies fall in and drown. It works, it’s nontoxic and it’s cheap.
dancing_star’s comment on lj:
I can help you here as I have the same problem if not careful. As I
suspect everyone in our neighbor does….
First I have Poison Free Ant & Roach killer… This helps some.
Second About every other week to once a month depending on how bad they
are this year from June till Oct I put out new Ant and Baits next to key
points under the house so the cats & kids can’t get to them. This is of
course poison.
Third you cannot leave any water, or protein foods unsealed or really out
of the fridge. The ants preferred foods are Ham, Chicken and Tuna. On the
other hand we’ve left fruit out and not an ant to be found if we’ve
followed the below, but put a drop of tuna juice I give them 30 seconds
to show up.
Fourth once their paths are established my suggestion is washing with
watered down bleach once it dry then spraying the Poison free ant spray.
Of course if you can fill any cracks they are coming in through but as
far as I can tell they’ll make their own if they can’t find one already
available. This keeps the ants from walking away with the children and
cats.
Oh and so you know, this has been a MILD YEAR so Far.
One year even though I dislike using poison in the house itself, we set
off bug booms in and under since NOTHING at all was working.
thanks for the suggestions! just as an f.y.i. — i have not been keeping track of lj lately (too much on my plate), so even though eric noticed a comment there and i re-posted it above, it’s likely that we are missing any comments that people make to the syndicated acct. on lj…
back to the ants:
my boss told me to get the perimeter of the house sprayed with some kind of non-toxic chrysanthemum stuff…it might be worth doing because we should, unfortunately, also get the crawl space treated against beetles, which is an unfinished item from the pest report, when we bought the house. of course, it would be nicer to not have to pay somebody to address the problem…
http://lifehacker.com/software/diy/get-rid-of-ants-with-baby-powder-192561.php
Numerous suggestions in the above, including one I mentioned to your Eric: [from the comments in the link above] “Then we bought a small box of “Grant’s Kills Ants” stakes. All of the ants in the entire yard and house were wiped out in a couple of days. Inside, you just put them on the floor under furniture. The poison container is made of metal, so your cats won’t be able to chew into it and enjoy the arsenic. One box of Grants every spring is all I’ve needed to be totally ant free”