Anyone who objects to the wholesale slaughter of insects, or cannot handle a grown woman bawling like a 3 year old child, look away now.
The house I live in is built on a slab. No crawl space or basement. A slab of concrete separates us - from them. And if there are cracks in that slab, which I have no doubt there are, it makes us that much closer to - them.
When it rains a lot and the ground gets saturated, they decide they need to come to the surface, swimming straight up into my house. ANTS. Now these are not just ordinary ants. I have spread and sprayed so much poison wherever I could without killing the humans and animals in the house, these things have morphed into some kind of super insects. Y'know when you see a single ant crawling across your kitchen floor you might reach down and squish it (so-to-speak) with an index finger? The ant sticks to your finger so you go to the garbage or the sink and flick it off - maybe rolling it a bit to make sure it's dead? Yeah. I know you know.
Well at my house if you do that, you think you've squished some kind of little scent bead. Cause you will smell - poison. Chemicals. These ants have apparently become somewhat immune to the super duper keep on killing for months poison I have poured into any and all cracks or crevices they magically appear from. SEVERAL times. Now they actually smell like poison yet are crawling, cat-food eating, happy healthy interlopers in my house! And they hang out in the bathroom too. What is THAT all about??
Okay, go back to what you were doing. I don't necessarily feel any better but I had to try. Now I'm going to go cry.
** Look what I just found on an exterminator website:
Ant baits are not effective for all colonies of ants. Some ants prefer protein bait others prefer sweet baits. Ants always prefer fresh baits.
Chemical sprays can INCREASE ant infestation. The queen (or queens!) is key to elimination. If you spray and kill the workers, the queen goes into high production to keep her colony going. More females may be designated as queens to produce more eggs which results in...you guessed it...MORE ANTS!
Oh man!!
I feel your pain. We have a never ending supply of ants too. After 7 years of research, I've finally figured out that we have "stink" ants. They give out that horrible smell. They have several queens which makes it almost impossible to get rid of them.
ReplyDelete*SIGH* It really is never ending.
Oh man, I thought I had created some kind of crazy mutant nuclear ants! I looked up stink ants - and the description says they smell like rotten coconut. I have no idea what that smells like, but I imagine that is what I have. Nasty SOBs. I just spent almost a hundred bucks to buy professional strength ant bait so I can wage war. UGH!!! I will not give up!
ReplyDelete.. make that over a hundred dollars.
ReplyDeleteMix borax with peanut butter, and dab it everywhere you see them, borax is a soap booster you will find it with soap for laundry and its dirt cheap. They eat it and carry it to the queen and it kills them dead I promise !!!
ReplyDeleteThank me later
Diane
Good luck! There is nothing worse than ants...So far *knock wood* I have not seen any this year. Spiders yes, ants no. Maybe the spiders ate the ants. But really I don't like to find any bugs in the house. I hate them all equally.
ReplyDeleteSpiders I can take but ants, no! In our city we are fighting fire ants in some neighborhoods. Yuck!
ReplyDeleteHey, what about the foliage/shrubs/flower beds around your house? We had a terrible ant problem for several years - spent a LOT in exterminators. Ripped out ALL of the English ivy (my nemesis!) & it helped, but they just moved.
ReplyDeleteFINALLY, we did a major overhaul of the bed along our retaining wall by the driveway - took out these hideously overgrown juniper bushes (2nd thought: these were my nemesis!)...all the while treating the soil, wall, house perimeter w/ said chemicals...When we finally got the last stump out & poured chemical in, the ants left us alone. We haven't seen an ant in the house since...
D@#& junipers!