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Ants? Ants!!
Figgy
Fighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered User regular
Fighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered User regular
For the past few days I've started to see ants on the main level of our house. It's been raining for about a week solid, so I figured maybe a few came in because of that. Today, I noticed it has gotten much worse. I can look in the main hall closet and see maybe 20 or so of them crawling around the shoes and out under the area rug there. I'll spray some cleaner and wipe them up, but more will be back an hour later.
I also noticed several milling about the corner of the cupboards where the sink is, along the floor tile. I opened the cupboards and looked under there, and sure enough there were several there.
Other than that, they seem to be randomly speckled throughout the house.
There is no food lying around or anything like that. Whenever I see them, they're not carrying anything and they're not swarming anything. It's almost like they're just roaming around in a general area. They try to scatter when I come over to wipe them up. Buggers.
Aside from putting a couple of those little round cylinder traps around in key places, what can I do here? Put some caulking around doors and windows where I see any gaps? Any other key places to look?
Technically, a savvy group of ants could just go up into the dryer vent outside and crawl into the ceiling downstairs, thus giving access to the floor in the kitchen. I wouldn't put it past them.
As a last resort, I think calling an exterminator would be a bit tricky, since "pest control" is covered under our condo fee. So, although I wouldn't be out of pocket, it'd be a bit of a song and dance and I'd rather handle this myself if at all possible.
I also noticed several milling about the corner of the cupboards where the sink is, along the floor tile. I opened the cupboards and looked under there, and sure enough there were several there.
Other than that, they seem to be randomly speckled throughout the house.
There is no food lying around or anything like that. Whenever I see them, they're not carrying anything and they're not swarming anything. It's almost like they're just roaming around in a general area. They try to scatter when I come over to wipe them up. Buggers.
Aside from putting a couple of those little round cylinder traps around in key places, what can I do here? Put some caulking around doors and windows where I see any gaps? Any other key places to look?
Technically, a savvy group of ants could just go up into the dryer vent outside and crawl into the ceiling downstairs, thus giving access to the floor in the kitchen. I wouldn't put it past them.
As a last resort, I think calling an exterminator would be a bit tricky, since "pest control" is covered under our condo fee. So, although I wouldn't be out of pocket, it'd be a bit of a song and dance and I'd rather handle this myself if at all possible.
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But if that doesn't work, you should try lining areas where you see them with boric acid.
I forgot to mention I have a cat, so I can't use anything that she can get at.
Also, I read that ants are attracted to the smell of other dead ants, because they want to carry away the carcass. So, going on a killing spree just attracts more fucking ants. I don't know how true that is.
Motherfuckers loved the vinegar.
I believe it's pretty low in toxicity to cats and dogs, and it will probably be fine so long as you don't use it in areas where's she's likely to walk.
If you're still concerned, you could try lining areas with diatomaceous earth instead.
Ants are just like any other creature out there trying to make their way - they don't understand the whole land of the giants thing...so figure out what they want. They want the mountain of food thats suddenly appeared in front of them.
If your in suburbia, Dump a bag of sugar at the far extremes of your property.
Give them a new mountain somewhere else. We started giving critters reasons to congregate away from our house and its worked surprisingly well.
As for ridding your house of the colony - Hot water and bleach mixed together. Spray on liberally and scrub every surface - countertops, floors, inside cupboards, and especially the sink. The bleach won't kill them, but it erases the chemical trails they use to navigate. It essentially makes them deaf and blind all at the same time. Just wipe them up with a paper towel and you're all set. Keep applying the bleach spray to any surface they re-appear on. Eventually, with no navigation markers for an area, they simply move elsewhere.
Costs about $3 too
Now that I think back, I actually put down some large grain salt into a gap in the baseboard by the patio door the other day when we first saw a couple of ants in the kitchen. It seems that has prevented them from going into the kitchen, because there are very few in there. Now, they're mostly in the hall closet/foyer. That leads me to believe they're getting in through a gap somewhere in the patio door, crawling under the floor/tiles/between the hardwood and the hall closet is where they've "come up."
I'll report back as to the success of these traps.
Terro traps are like dropping a nuke on the ant colony only it kills them instead of turning them into giant fire-breathing monsters.
So I moved a second trap into the closet because it's now clear this is their preferred point of entry. Despite how dire the situation looks here, there were only ever 1/4 of them before I put those traps down. They dig it.
You can see where they are coming in though along the back wall where the baseboard is. On the other side of that wall is the garage, and I went in there today and cleaned up and examined the entire area--not a single ant in there. There was however a strange little hole where some drywall is built up off the regular garage wall and it creates a 2x2 sort of channel for maybe a foot and a half. Intended design, it seems, but it's odd. Hard to explain, but again I could not find a single ant in that area.
I'm thinking they got through somewhere and have a colony in the floor or wall. Possibly close to that closet, since that's where I saw most of them scouting for food (even though there was nothing in there.)
The traps say it will take 24-48 hours before an ant dies from exposure to the poison, so I'm hoping the colony will be dead by the end of the week. If not, I guess I start bothering the condo board. I don't like the idea of 1000 dead ants somewhere in my floors though
I have found that ants are attracted to the crushed bodies of their brethren, and they carry them away. However, its been my experience that there is a limit to how many dead bodies they are willing to carry away before they forsake an area. I will look for an area where there is a lot of them and hover over them as I crush them with my bare fingers (probably necessary to leave my human scent?) and leave their corpses where they were crushed. I usually kill about 30 ants, and then leave for a few hours and come back to see if they dragged away the dead ones. If all the dead ants are gone, and they are still scouting the area, I repeat the ant slaughter again the same way. They usually stop after the second time. This method has worked 7 out of 8 times for me.
There was this one time a colony of ants did not get my subtle hint. I tried the Terro Liquid Ant Bait for about 2-3 weeks without real success. They ate it and died immediately, but it didn't stop them from coming. It seems they were actually MORE of them by the time I gave up on that method. It was weird because it worked with the ants at my workplace. So I sprayed the edges of my apartment with Hot Shot's clear spray that will probably end up giving me cancer. I outlined the entire apartment with it, including windows, and wore gloves as I took a small cloth to rub it into the edges. I left the apartment for the whole day with the windows open to air it out. While it doesn't have a distinct smell, it will FEEL as if its slowly burning the insides of your nose. I hated using this, but it works and I never saw another ant (or spider, yay) in that place for the extra year I lived there.
Something like that might work if you know where they're getting in exactly or if you're in an apartment.
In an end-unit townhome (1800 sq feet + finished basement) there are just too many places they can get out of the floors/walls where they are maneuvering. I can't seem to find exactly where they're getting in, but I don't see how I could ever track that down. There are so many tiny holes in a house's exterior. For starters, how could you stop them just crawling into the weeping holes in the bricks?
I sprayed where they were coming in, all around the doors, and even took some up to the neighbors. The stuff worked instantly. Haven't seen an ant indoors since. It's a neurotoxin that works on ants and spiders. You spray it directly on them for insta-kill and make a line of it they can't cross without dying soon after. It's also dangerous to fish, so if you decide to use it, keep that in mind.
Supposedly it's safe for mammals. I still wash my hands thoroughly and leave home for a couple hours after use. It smells, but it's not necessarily noxious.
I think I saw a bottle of that when I was at Home Depot. I'll keep that in mind if my current plan of attack fails. So far, the amount of ants seems to be decreasing.
My fear with spraying a deterrent is that if they're indeed nesting somewhere in the house, they'll just keep popping up in random spots while I keep spraying each new crevice they find to escape their lair.
Whenever I find an area that is regularly traversed by ants, I take a small piece of cardboard (turns out the little boxes you get chewing gum in, such as Trident, etc.) then squirt some of the stuff into it, and then leave that lying around where the ants are sure to go past it.
The box mostly serves to create a dark spot, because I've discovered that the ants tend to hide under things.
What will happen then is that the ants will take the stuff, and bring it back to their queen, eventually killing the whole colony. The reason it does this is that the boric acid doesn't kill them immediately, giving them time to take it back.
So all you have to do is tolerate the ants for a few days, after which they'll stop bothering you.
You can also make certain areas off-limits, forcing the ants into only certain parts of your house/appartment by spreading some diatomaceous earth. It's a white powder that looks like talc, but to the ants, it's like broken glass, which will shred their exoskeletons, leaving the fragile flesh inside to be exposed, and eventually dry out. The ants will usually avoid this, and go around. It's not a solution in itself, but it can prevent an infestation from spreading, and control the areas where ants can be found.
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