Now You See 'em

And now you don't. Just as promised. We placed the dabs of Terro among the swarms of ants and waited. At first more ants came, just like we were warned on the package. We remained calm. We kept the bait traps full.

Each morning there were fewer and fewer of them and they seemed more and more tired and slow moving. Finally, after 2, maybe 3 days, there just weren't any more ants. Hooray!

We waited, just to make absolutely sure before we reclaimed our kitchen counters. After a day or 2 with no ants we wiped everything down and replaced appliances and utensils and life returned to normal. And we have been ant free ever since. Until next time.

The Uninvited

It could be worse. At least it's not cockroaches.

At first there were just a few. Scouts presumably, looking for food. Then the word spread and more of them began to appear. Ants. We kidded ourselves for the first few days, just crushing the random intruders, and mopping them up with paper towels. But it got difficult to keep up with the increasing numbers.

We cleared the counters where they were most active, on both sides of the stove. We swabbed the counters clean and applied vinegar. Still they came. I took a certain degree of pleasure in vacuuming them up. A nice quick solution, but like the others we had tried so far, ultimately ineffective.

Nathan, who is much better at finding real solutions than am I, was browsing the internet for ant riddance solutions came across what we hope is the final solution for these annoying critters. He found the answer on a website called Get Rich Slowly, coincidentally run by a friend of a friend.

Terro was the answer he claimed. I made haste to the hardware store around the corner and got a small bottle of this sugar and borax bait. Ants come, indulge in the mixture, transport it back to the nest, and well... you know. The slogan is Bait, Wait, Eliminate.

We are currently in the Wait part of the strategy, trying not to freak out at the increased numbers of ants, while they stock up on the poison that will solve the problem once and for all. Or at least for the near future.

Here is what the bait traps look like. Kind of like a pretty flower, right?

It's just a piece of cardboard from the packaging, doused with the sticky mixture. They do seem to love it, and belly up to the bar like it's happy hour. And it is kind of fun to watch them stagger away from the bait station with high hopes, not of moving a rubber tree plant, but of delivering their load of "food" to the colony.

It is my task today to make sure the feeders don't run dry. I want to be a generous as possible with the juice in the hopes that I will soon be able to use these counters again for normal kitchen activities, instead of entomology experiments.

Updates to follow.