The Ants Go Marching. Again.
You know how everyone has those things in their house that they pretend not to see? I've got a super long list of them. There's the Easter decorations hanging out above the fireplace. I'm pretty sure there are fur tumbleweeds beneath the dining room furniture. We won't talk about how much of the trim in the house is half-painted.
And then there's the family room carpet.
It has been on my last nerve since we first moved in, mostly because we screwed up when we moved in. I know I've written about it before, but the short version of the tale is that it was raining in our family room the day we had the house inspection. It's not supposed to rain when you turn on the water to the bathtub, so it was a bad thing. To prevent mold under the carpet when it got all wet, it was pulled up. When the carpet was stretched back out, it wasn't stretched all the way and there was an edge all along the kitchen that wasn't really finished. Give the cats and dogs a day or two and they will, of course, tear at the unfinished edge of carpet. Now there's a gap between the wood floor and the carpet. It comes complete with an exposed row of nails.
In other words, it really needs to be fixed. And by "fixed," I mean we need to run the wood flooring the rest of the way across the house. Alas, the budget has not yet allowed for that project.
So I pretend not to see it.
BUT.
As if I wasn't already working hard to ignore that little part of the house, now there's extra attention being drawn to it. We have a new ant invasion. This time they're coming in through the back of the house and marching along the trim that is in the middle of the needs-to-be-fixed flooring.
It's not a bad invasion, by the way. At any given time you might see five ants total along that carpet edge. So it's not enough ants to make me lose my mind, but it's enough to force me to look at that unfinished carpet approximately 35932753 times per day.
To make matters better, the ants are mocking you, internet.
Since it was a minor invasion, I figured I would give every crazy theory the internet has to offer a try. There is currently a line of cornmeal, a mound of powdered sugar mixed with baking soda, a barrier made of cinnamon, a row of cream of wheat, a borax/sugar mixture fence, and a talcum powder wall all lined up along the point of entry and beyond.
The ants don't care about your crazy theories, internet. The ants are mocking you for thinking any of that would deter and/or kill them.
Instead of being bothered or deterred by the ridiculous quantity of alleged ant barriers, the ants are happily marching through your mess, pausing to laugh at me, and then continuing on their way. Every day a single lonely ant ventures away from the line of carpet and makes its way to my laptop. Just one ant. Every day. Crawling across my laptop.
So if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go ahead and burn down the house. That seems to be the only rational way to deal with the whole fiasco.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Reader Comments (2)
Okay, yes, but what about the nuclear radiation for ants that I learned because of one of your previous ant invasions? (Gah! Can't think of the name of it.) Terro? Taro? Something. Surely THAT will work.
But if not, definitely go for the kerosene. It'll fix so many problems all at at once.
I read somewhere that ants followed a scented trail left behind by the scout (the line ant that goes out to find the food). So every time I saw ants, I would scrub the area - and especially the area in between the entry point and their final resting place (ahem) - with vinegar and dish soap. That at least kept them at bay until another brave ant found its way across the kitchen and the others followed.