A rambling account of Ants and their imminent demise, among other things

Although the   blue sky that  greeted me  when I awoke this morning was a welcome sight after yesterday's gloomy grey sky, it still wasn't quite enough to   drive away the winter blues feeling I get  this time of year. Maybe it's the cold, the shorter days, the itching to get outside and feel the warm sun without   having to bundle up like the Michelin Man. I find it hard to come up with anything worth  blogging about when the blues hit, but since I vowed to do better this year, I'm determined to try, even if I just have to ramble on aimlessly :-).  Please feel free to leave  if you get bored. 

I did get outside today  long enough to refill the bird feeders and clean up some odds and ends on the deck.  But what was really nice was puttering about in the greenhouse for a little while, deadheading some plants, clearing up a space  for seed starting and just admiring the  few plants that are still blooming.  With the sun beating down on it all day the  greenhouse  was toasty warm.  Which is probably why every ant for miles around has decided to take up residence in there.  I take that back- there are some ants who have decided the  window ledge above the kitchen sink is a nice toasty place to  reside. 

 I admire ants- they are industrious little creatures, and are  interesting to watch as they signal each other by touching antennae as they scurry back and forth between food sources and their nest.  I always feel guilty when I dispatch them to the great ant colony in the beyond, especially when I see one trying valiantly to  carry his fallen comrade back to home base. But I'm just not quite ready to  coexist peacefully with them yet. At least, not in the house or in the greenhouse, where they pour out of my pots in droves every time I water. 

We can usually keep a milder invasion under control by spraying peppermint oil. Ants use chemicals called pheromones to leave scent trails for other ants to follow. The peppermint oil, or any other strong oil, such as cinnamon,  interferes with their scent receptors and they can no longer signal each other and usually stay away from the strong scent. But sometimes, they  are so invasive and   come in such huge numbers that we resort to more drastic measures. My favorite method is to use Terro ant baits or drops. The  active ingredient  in Terro is  Borax in a liquid base that attracts the worker ants who consume the  bait and live just long enough to carry the  liquid back to the nest  to deliver a deadly dose to the rest  of the  colony. When we first began using Terro we used  drops on little   cardboard squares.  It took a little while for the ants to discover the bait, but  soon a few came and began to fill up on the syrupy liquid. 
 
 As word (or whatever communication form  ants use) got out more ants came- and kept coming until there was a huge pile of ants upon ants upon ants on the  bait. This went on for two or three days and then there were none.  They   just disappeared. Needless to say, it was a little unnerving to see that many ants on the kitchen counters,  so we began to use the traps- the ants climb inside, and many of them die there, but enough  get back to the nest to  deliver the  poison and soon they are all gone. As I said, I feel guilty, but not enough to stop using the stuff, especially after discovering once a few years ago that they had  invaded my cutlery/gadget drawer and  a sizable contingent had  taken up residence in my turkey baster. 

Killing ants does nothing to lift the winter blues, but  it did give me something to blog about tonight, in a rambling, roundabout way, so maybe ants in  the kitchen  do have some redeeming qualities after all! :-)

A Rant About ANTS!!!

My day began at 5AM when Patches, the hungry cat got right in my face on the bed to let me know she wanted her breakfast. No amount of talking to her would convince her to wait, so dragging my pump and tubing with me, I trundled off to the kitchen, fed her, made sure she was eating, then stumbled back down the hall and back to bed. But try as I might, I could not go back to sleep.

 When Mr. G got up later I could hear him up in the kitchen cussing and carrying on. Evidently the cat had left some food in her dish and an entire army of ants had attacked it and were swarming all over the floor and in the dish. There was a long line marching in under the back door, across the baseboards and along the wall all the way across the kitchen to the cat's dish. It was horrible! I swear we could hear them beating their tiny drums and making little swishing noises as they  brandished their miniature swords while marching resolutely forward. We sprang into action, attacking them with the peppermint oil solution I had mixed up earlier. Usually, you can spray peppermint oil to deter ants and interfere with the pheromone trail they use to signal each other. But I've discovered that it also seems to kill them on contact it you spray the ants directly. So that's what we did.  We sprayed it all over the ants and the trail and set more Terro traps outside the door.I prefer to  use  Terro and have them carry the bait back to the nest  to kill the ants we can't see, but seeing the huge number we saw this morning called for immediate action and the use of deadly force.

We have had a terrible time with ant invasions this year, worse than any year I can remember. They've crawled in all the kitchen windows and under the doors. Every time we think we've seen the last of them, and go without a sighting for a few days another battalion turns up in full battle gear a few days later.

But I think we have the problem under control on the  window ledge above the kitchen sink, at least. I have positioned an entire jagu of minions  on the window ledge, plus a green koala bear to give them moral support and tell them Aussie jokes.  They have been charged with sounding the alarm at the first sign of an ant so that a new dose of Terro can be administered. Here is a pic of  home guard.  Mr. G purchased  the minions as a joke some time back when I said that I needed minions to do my bidding.

On a more pleasant note- as I was assembling the minions, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a hummingbird flitting all over the fuchsia basket. Much nicer to look at than the dead ants that littered the floor behind me. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I hope I don't come back as an ant, because I have done terrible things to ants. And I have felt no remorse.