The Healthy Parenting Blog

Ants, Ants and More Ants!

I am NOT a bug person.  Yet they seem to like me. In NJ, before we sold our house, we had a Carpenter Ant invasion (yes those HUGE ones).  It had rained for 17 days straight and apparently they were looking for dry ground INSIDE my kitchen cabinets.    I can still recall opening the cabinets and seeing only a moving blackness.  That was the first time I actually called an exterminator.  They were as non toxic as I could get (that bait stuff they drill into your cabinets…its made of borax which isn’t great but better than most poisons). 

 Now here in NC, we’re running into some ant trouble as well.  First, I’m new to dealing with fire ants and I still can’t tell if an ant is a fire ant or not.  SO…I’m afraid of all of them.  We had an ant hill right on our front walk so Liam decides to pour boiling water on them.  What happened?  The entire colony went looking for a new place to live INSIDE my house.  Given we knew the reason for the house entry I used my famous method for getting rid of ants in the house.  The vaccuum cleaner.  I just sit there and vaccuum up every ant I see.  Not very zen but hey, my rules on killing bugs are clear.  You bite me or invade my space, I’ll rack the karma points up.  You leave me alone, I leave you alone. And if you’re a spider, you get special treatment with a lift outside. 

Why bring all this up now?  Well, today I came home to hundreds of little ants climbing my counter ledge (on the backsplash) and traveling the length of my counters.  Vaccuum comes out and even my special spray that kills them dead on contact.  I should market the darn stuff but I can’t yet find a spray bottle that will stay working with this stuff.  All it is is some water, EOs and a whole lot of cayenne pepper with a touch of soap.  I just finished rubbing it into the corners with a toothbrush.  We’ll see.  I’ll keep you posted.