We have ants, and I feel like I've failed as a grown-up.
When I was little, every time I left a crumb of food anywhere in the house, I was scolded with "clean this up right now or we'll get ants!" That, and "pick what you want and close the freezer unless you want to pay the electric bill!" were repeated so many times throughout the '80s and '90s that I thought ants and big electric bills were literally the worst things that could happen to a human being.
Well, now we have both. There's not much I can do about the electric bill situation (you try living in a house built in the 1930s), but as far as the ants go, I keep wondering where I went wrong. When we first discovered them, Brad and I literally took apart the entire kitchen to clean, mop and disinfect it. (Well, I took apart the kitchen -- Brad DJ'd the cleaning session.) That worked for awhile, but now they're back. Since we have two very curious cats, we tried to avoid insecticides as long as humanly possible. We ended up buying a few ant traps and put them in places that the cats can't reach, but so far, they don't seem to be working. Either that, or there are nightly ant orgies happening under the fridge that cause them to reproduce five times faster than they can eat poisonous peanut butter. And if this is the case, I should at least get to watch.
So, what's the next step? Rope off the kitchen so the cats can't get in (virtually impossible if you've ever lived with cats), and spray the whole thing down with Raid? Call an exterminator? Live with it, and remain in constant fear that I'm going to step on an ant in my bare feet (OMG the very thought just sent chills up my leg)?
Boo on being a grown-up. Now I'm going to spend 20 minutes standing in front of the open fridge.
5 comments:
I'm fairly sure that there are non chemical ways to get rid of ants. I do know that you have to kill the scent of their trail or they'll keep coming back. What did you clean with? I'd try vinegar that seems to take care of anything that's sensitive to smell (bonus, it will keep your cats away too, they don't like the smell). You might try googling ant removal.
Ants HATE cinnamon. Make a paste of it and put in areas where they are coming in.
OMG we have ants too. It's worse with roommates, because you can't physically make them clean up after themselves. And I'm lazy. I have just enough motivation to clean up after myself. Most of the time. So we have ants too, and they are freaking me out. Wish I had advice, but I don't. I might have to try that cinnamon trick though.
I played some awesome tunes during that particular cleaning venture, I believe I was still swooning over LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver at the time.
we had ants in our house the first winter we lived here. And we're clean! :) They were in our master bath, of all places. I'd go in to use the bathroom at like 2 am and I'd look up and see an ant on the ceiling, dangling over me. In our case, we found a few holes (window, pipe hole under sink) that we thought might be where they were getting in from and just sprayed death-to-ant spray in there. Eventually they went away! (We totally had rolly pollys too! wtf?!)
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