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God damn it ants fuck
Einhander
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I have ants in my room. I bought some of those little Raid traps (the ones that look like little black plastic bunkers with sweet, sweet, poisoned antbait inside) and they aren't doing jack shit. I put them at the edges and corners where I though the ants were coming in from/walking past, and even saw them cruising into them.
That was a week and a half ago. Now they are still here, crawling around being little shits and making it so that I cannot leave any food or soda in my room for more than an hour or so.
I know leaving food/sugar in the room is a bad idea, but it's my fucking room and I want to be able to do what I please in it.
So, how do I nuke these fucks with extreme prejudice? I'm in an upstairs room, so I'm assuming they have a hive or whatever somewhere inside the house, because it seems to me that coming in from outside would be a hell of a long trip for some ants. They look like just your average little black household ants but I want to wipe them from the face of the earth.
That was a week and a half ago. Now they are still here, crawling around being little shits and making it so that I cannot leave any food or soda in my room for more than an hour or so.
I know leaving food/sugar in the room is a bad idea, but it's my fucking room and I want to be able to do what I please in it.
So, how do I nuke these fucks with extreme prejudice? I'm in an upstairs room, so I'm assuming they have a hive or whatever somewhere inside the house, because it seems to me that coming in from outside would be a hell of a long trip for some ants. They look like just your average little black household ants but I want to wipe them from the face of the earth.
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Ah, I share your hatred of those little six-legged bastards, let me see if I can help.
There's three levels of pain you can dish out against insects:
(Note that each level should build on the other: that is, if you choose to do level 3, do level 2 and 1 just in case as well... but I may be overkilling it. I HATE the little bastards)
Level 1. Minimal Collateral Damage.
In level 1, you can do pretty much what you're doing now. Passive bait traps, hoping to get them. You'll want to be sure to get the kind of traps where the ants bring the poisoned food back to the hive (and thus kill them all), and not ones that just kill on contact. That won't help. Look at the products carefully before you buy them.
Level 2. Reasonable collateral damage.
If you don't mind being surrounded by and poisons, get an effective ant spray (I think the most effective brand I've ever used was called "Grant's", but I'd have to check the actual bottle to be sure.), spray it along every sideboard, along every crease between walls (that is, between all the walls and the floor, all the walls and the ceiling, and along the creases between walls themselves if you want to be really anal), and along all of the creases/openings of every window.
Getting a highly effective spray will help to neutralize the situation, as they will not survive the trip inside and eventually forage elsewhere for food. You must be sure to seal all possible entrances to your room using the spray, however, or it will be less effective. Be thorough with that shit.
Level 3. Unreasonable collateral damage.
Cover everything you find valuable with plastic, or take it out of the room (making sure it doesn't have ants while you do so). Buy a "bug bomb" fogger (just one, unless you have a *very* large room). Seal what you can, and then use the device as instructed, following up afterwords with the procedures in levels 2 and 3.
Generally, an effective trap in level 1 will suffice. I put the other information out there just in case it's needed. And because I'm a paranoid bastard.
EDIT: As a follow-up to whatever immediate action you take, once you've secured the inside, you'll want a professional sprayer to spray the outside perimeter of your house to try and prevent more from coming in.
Spraying your room will generally keep them out for a while, but they'll probably just go somewhere else in your house.
Probably the most effective method is just calling an exterminator. A little pricey, but they usually offer a guarantee.
I've already got the bait that they take back to the nest, but I guess they aren't into it. The next step I think will be the spray around the baseboards and stuff.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
I'm not sure what the "best" bait is, but I know that there's bait that insta-kills, and there's bait that kills the hive. You want the bait that kills the hive.
*edit* http://www.biconet.com/crawlers/GIFs/terroAnt1box.jpg thats the stuff right there and its never failed me
Last week I had ants in my room too. Something in the trash attracted them. The first thing I did was remove both trash bins (and anything else extra I felt they might enjoy) and then I want to bed. Didn't spray poison or anything, just removed the source and went to bed.
The next morning they had packed up and gone home. There was one or two scouts still but even they were completely gone by the third day.
I know you say you want to be able to do what ever you goddamn please in your room, and I don't say you should feel otherwise, but keep in mind that the ants don't know any better. They are just doing what ants do, ya know? So for the very beginning you're going to have to bend a little and watch your habits in regards to what's left out and what not. After they retreat to another tasty source, you can become a little more lax on your behavior.
Take this advice for what it's worth, I admit to being against the KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT mindset.
That is true. Though I am a proponent of the "KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT" mindset, it is true that you're working against yourself if you're leaving a bunch of crap that's tasty to ants around. It's not helpful in your goal of removing them, at the least.
Doing it inside almost seems counterintuitive. You're only keeping them out of one room, not the house. Even if you hate your roommates, there is still a kitchen to worry about.
If you do have a big house, apartment, or whatever, an exterminator might really be worth it. Get one that seems legit, and has a guarantee. The good ones really do know what they're doing.
In the mean time, be smart, and don't leave any food, or drinks laying around.
I use this raid that comes in a purple can specilized for ants. It supposedly has a country fresh scent. At first I disliked the smell, but now my mind associates it with bug doom. So I enjoy it.
Trust me, this stuff works like a charm. The hardest part will be vacuuming up all their little corpses.
most ants are looking for water and food. so give a good cleanup. out here in CA, we get ants bad during the summer, the most effective thing i have found is boric acid. there are a ton of recipes out there, but its essentialy sugar boric acid and water. ants bring it back to the queen and it kills it and soon the colony dies.
it takes a bit of time to really see results though
How big are the ants? Little sugar ants? Half an inch long or larger, or smaller than that? Do they look fat? Do you have a wooden deck/porch/stoop/whatever attached to your home?
Are you renting? Is it a stand-alone unit or part of a complex (townhouses, etc)
Are you seeing them anywhere else, like bathrooms, laundry rooms, or the kitchen? Does your room adjoin one of the above? Have you had any problems with water leaks, from any source (pipes, roof, etc)? Has the weather been very wet in your area recently?
Do you have a basement? If so, is it finished?
Do you have weather stripping around all the entrances to your house? (If not, install it. It not only helps keep insects out it saves you an assload on your electric bill.)
Any other bugs in the house? Are these ants a seasonal problem? How long have they been around?
My roommate got the traps you lay on the ground in corners and stuff, but that didn't really help. I just got those bombs one day after work, and we set them up before we both had work the next day. I put 1 in the bathroom and 1 in his room and mine, just to be sure, opened all doors, cept for the front and covered anything I though needed to be covered.
By the time we came home the rooms were pretty aired out, and the next morning, NO ANTS!. W00t. So I suggest the bomb, they are the quickest ways of getting rid of them.
They look like your average tiny black sugar ants. We don't really have any woodwork attached to the house.
We're renting, and my landlord is so tight with money you could stick a lump of coal up his ass and two weeks later you'd have a diamond, so I doubt he'd want to spring for an exterminator.
It's always wet and rainy in my area, especially this time of year. I've seen a couple of the ants in the bathroom, which is on the first floor, not quite below my room.
No basement.
I don't know.
I haven't found any other bugs in the house, and I haven't lived here long enough to know if it's a seasonal thing or not. They've only really started showing up the past couple of weeks.
I think I'll try the cleanup/bug gel method and if I still have trouble I'll report back and we can try something more drastic.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
If you're part of an apartment complex, you might want to try bringing it up with your neighbors, just to see if they've had similar problems. If so you might want to call around and see if you can set up some sort of package deal for your clump of units. We generally tried to avoid these when I worked at Terminix but you might be able to pull it off.
I have a not-really-serious ant issue at my current apartment... it was only bad when the stupid comcast people messed up the sealant around the cable line, so they could walk directly in through the hole in the wall, but other than that I only get a couple coming into the bathroom when it's pouring for 3 days straight (which I can deal with)
Ants can find plenty of better stuff outside.
Admittedly, I'm not sure... the only time I had a serious ant problem, I went to Level 2 of my three level encroachment... and because I wanted to make sure the whole house was safe, I laid traps on the outside and sprayed the outside. I wasn't sure if that was an issue (or if he was even allowed to), hence my recommendation of doing it just in his room.
But indeed, I think that treating the outside (and the whole of the outside) would be better. But given that he has roommates that may mind (or a landlord that may mind for some reason), he might not have that option. Not sure though... you'll need to talk to the roomies in that situation.
Over the course of about 3 years in gradeschool/middle school I turned our yard from an ant haven, into almost completely ant free by dumpin some wild garlic on their nests. They usually abandonned the nest within a day or two.
We had a huge ant problem in my kitchen a couple summers ago. I done everything I could to get rid of them. I'd even put gaff tape over the outlets they were coming in from and they still came in. My GF bought some garam masala to make soup and they stopped coming in. It was awesome.
I would watch where they were coming and going and spray in all of those locations. It would keep them out in the short term. The spray was nasty smelling and not the kind if thing I want to have near my food.
Then they started coming in to the bathroom to get a drink from the sink and shower. They would also just hang out there, not drinking or looking for food/water. Just hanging out like "We have enough of your food and water, so we can afford some luxury time". That was the last straw.
I bought a few of the "take the food home" traps and put them right in the path where the ants would travel. Then I put a small chunk of freshly made banana bread on top. I set this up at around 8 pm. In the morning they were swarming around the bread (I make good banana bread, really). I threw out the crumbs but didn't move the trap. When I came home from work, there were much fewer ants. Within a few days there were zero ants in either location. I didn't have a problem for the last few months we lived there.
My theory is that the bait isn't enough for the ants to want to tell their friends about. The bread was perfect for them to eat and bring back home. Eventually much of the colony heard about the bread and went to go get some. This left a strong trail for them to follow and when they got to the trap, they mistook the bait for the banana bread. Then I sealed the deal by taking away the bread and made sure they only had the bait as the option.
Psychological warfare on ants!
As to your problem...get rid of any sweet things in the room and try not to have stacks of books or other items that ants can crawl under. Rodents and insects seem to make trails in "hidden paths" if they can.
I understand you want to be free to do as you please in your room, but it's usually a bad idea to leave food and drink unattended anyway. Even if you live by yourself. What if you try to roofie yourself while you're not around?
All jokes aside, seriously, getting rid of sweets and any paths they might take or little "clearings" under objects that they can congregate beneath will help immensely. I used to have an ant problem, I never used RAID, and a little organization helped. It helped more than keeping sweets out of the room, in fact.
it sounds kinda simple, but that's really fuckin brilliant.
i'm going to try this next time i encounter an ant problem.
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