Monday, August 13, 2007

Ants! Hope at Last!

It was a time for desperate measures. Our kitchen had been overrun by grease ants.

Grease ants: so small, they can march through crevasses to narrow for ordinary pests.

Grease ants: so cunning, when encountering a patch of grease laced with ant poison, they eat the grease but leave the poison.

Until this weekend, the only means of slowing them down was the application of vinegar spray. And even that was only a temporary measure. They kept coming back.

Always, they kept coming back!

Then, my eldest daughter, after exhaustive research, came up with a new instrumentality through which this household might emerge victorious against the ants!

She combined
  • Talcum powder
  • Instant coffee
  • Ground cinnamon
  • Chili powder
- and applied the mixture to to the beachhead which the grease ants had established, and also applied the mixture at strategic points along their supply lines.

Success! Today, I can confidently say that the ants have been defeated, or at least repelled.

My daughter told of one ant she had observed. The creature advanced along a supply line until it encountered a grain of the noxious compound. Retreating, it adjusted its course and tried again, only to be thwarted once more. Again and again it tried, and failed, to circumvent the instrumentality of our new offensive.

I, myself, witnessed an ant: no doubt one of the last of the horde; running from one to another of its fallen comrades. In most cases, the sad creature approached closely enough to be within, I should think, antenna-reach before quickly turning aside to approach another corpse. Sometimes, perhaps because the evidence of destruction was so obvious, the lone survivor turned away while still at a distance.

Although I could, of course, hear nothing, I imagined the lone survivor calling out as it approached each fallen ant, "Abigail?" "Adelynn?" "No! Not Ahdena!" "Aldalee?" "Oh, no: They got Althea!" "Ambret?" "Azilda?" And so on, across the grim landscape.

It may seen cold, even heartless, but I feel but only a small pang of pity for the creatures who invaded our domain.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lol, funny stuff!

Glad you used natural ingredients and not toxics :)

Unknown said...

Apparently our grease ants are less reilient than yours. We had been using the vinegar method and, indeed, the tiny demons simply hid until we went to bed. The next morning they would be back in full strength.

Finally, I caved in and bought an ant trap. They swarmed the thing, and now we're down to one limping trickle that are still fighting to get in there. I feel bad for the little buggers, but they shouldn't have invaded my house. How would they feel if I crawled around their kitchen sink?!

Brian H. Gill said...

Thanks.
:)
Not toxic? I know what you mean, but *shudder* - those ingredients!

Brian H. Gill said...

legbamel, we tried ant traps. When I asked how effective they had been, one of my daughters executed a Germano-American equivalent of a Bronx cheer, and said, "nothing."

Our ants acted as if they had received intelligence that the ant trap was, in fact, a trap, and avoided it.

Unknown said...

Gosh! I hope it wasn't passed down the grapevine from ours. We finally discovered that it was a container of kitty treats that was attracting them. I popped off the overlapping lid and found hundreds of dead ones in there, although none appeard to have made it into the container itself.

Anonymous said...

Im afraid we will have to get rid of our kids, its them that attract the ants

AVP said...

:)

Those ingradients sound as if you are inviting them to dress themselves up and have a get together (talcum powder, coffee, cinnamon and chilli!! lol)

Guess they went to the wrong party.

Anonymous said...

That's a great ANTidote....I'll have to remember that one just in case...

--Steve

Taz said...

=) Haha!

I'll have to remember that one come summer. They take over here like no-body's business - though in Australia we call them sugar-ants.

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