Die, ants! Die!

[sinanju]

The lovely and talented snippy and I have been battling ants off-and-on for years. They periodically appear to make our lives miserable and then we fight them off or at least smite enough of them that their presence becomes less noticeable. When snippy remodeled our bathroom a while back, we discovered that a major ant nest lurked under the old bathtub. Getting rid of that seemed to put a hurtin' on them for a while.

This year they've been particularly bad. They're all over the kitchen and even the bathroom again. We've done our best to make sure there's nothing for them to eat, but even if they're just desperately looking for food sources, they're annoying. We made good use of some poison bait stations last year and deployed them again this year when the ants got out of hand. Sometimes they seem to make a difference...and sometimes not. Sometimes it seems like they're everywhere but in the bait stations.

When we stopped by Home Depot last weekend for some other items we asked about ant poison. The employee there recommended one particular product. The Combat poison bait that comes in a big plastic syringe. You squirt a little here and there where the ants come into the house (or exit the walls as the case may be) so they can discover it, eat it and take it back to the next to feed everyone else. So last night before I made dinner, I squirted a couple of big dollops of the stuff on a counter (far from where I was working, thanks) where the ants were busily to-ing and fro-ing. Then I set to work making dinner. A few minutes later, I walked over to take look.

Holy cow! It looked like a beach on 4th of July weekend (if you imagine the gooey ant poison as the ocean). The same ants who seemed to turn up their noses at the bait stations were acting like they couldn't get enough of this stuff. They swarmed around it like paparazzi around Michael Jackson. Hours later I went back to look and most of the bait was gone, as were most of the ants and the few remaining didn't seem to be moving. I suspect they may have gorged themselves on the stuff and are now pinin' for the fjords.

So I'm very pleased with the new product. I will continue to use it liberally about the house in hopes of annihilating our unwelcome guests.

* * *

On the other hand, I'm less pleased with another purchase from Home Depot. We bought a new lawn mower. A reel mower (i.e., the unpowered kind) I'll be using to cut the grass starting in July. My complaint is not with the mower as a mower, but with the clown who bagged the parts needed to put it together. I'm supposed to have--in addition to other bolts and nuts, two (2) 1" bolts. I have one (1) 1" bolt and 1 much bigger (longer and wider) bolt instead. It's not a major problem--it's a standard bolt I can pick up at the local hardware store (driving all the way back out to Home Depot isn't worth the trouble), but it's annoying.

Comments

Combatting Critters....

[shrewreader.livejournal.com]

Mega thanks, Sianju! My family seems genetically doomed to be plagued by ants of various ilks. There's a nasty enormous nest or 3 in my front banks, and as I'm wanting to actually -garden- in them, that's problematic. Then there's the hordes that, Mongol-like, seem to just -WAIT- to see where my kitchen is and the cat food to invade.

I shall sally forth to the home depot to get some of this stuff you've had such good fortune with and make like a Harriet Vane murderess this weekend, I think. One round for critters, one round for the poison ivy in the back. TYVK for the recc!

--Shrewkate

Re: Combatting Critters....

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I hope it works as well for you as it seems to be working for us. We've seen almost nothing of ants in the kitchen since I used that stuff. I'll keep using it to make sure they get plenty of opportunity to kill themselves, but so far it works wonderfully.