We tried everything. We had tiny ants that couldn’t climb up into the bait station so I made bridges for them out of paper. Nothing worked. We hired an exterminator. That worked.
Hey Oregonian here too! Feeling the rain too but luckily my house doesn’t seem to attract any ants. It’s weird but not unappreciated. My OLD house did though and what I found to be the absolute best deterrent was cinnamon! They were always coming in just about my kitchen sink, so I sprinkled ground cinnamon at the spot and no more ants. It does need to be refreshed every couple of weeks but it worked amazing. Doesn’t kill them but they hate it and stay away.
Terro is definitely the stuff to try. It comes in little squeeze bottles but also in pre-filled little tubs which are less messy to use.
HOWEVER. The way Terro is supposed to work is the worker ants tank up on the stuff, then take it back to the nest. My own personal ants are too dumb to do this from the tubs; they just fall in and drown. Shallow pools of the stuff, on a card or something, work way better. The more individual dollops, the more room to crowd around at the trough and drink up the sweet, sweet poison, then take it all back to the Queen.
I do find corpses in the puddles left on cards. Perhaps, like goldfish, they can eat until they die.
:dubious:
Baking soda mixed some confectioners sugar . The sugar will attract the ants and baking soda kills them . I used only baking soda and poured it over a huge pile of tiny ants that I didn’t want to get into my condo and it worked.
Like everyone else has been saying, try the Terro. There’s the syrupy bait, and also spray.
When the ants are on the move because of rain where I live they travel in trails up to about a foot wide and hundreds of feet long. There isn’t enough Terro in the world, and if you piss them off with anything it makes things much worse.
After trying every possible mechanism of attack short of a flame thrower I finally came to the realization that the local remedy is the best one: step aside and do nothing.
If you let them march straight through the house unimpeded they go away pretty quickly. Disrupting them in any way only prolongs their unstoppable journey through the house to get wherever they are going.
In any case if waiting them out isn’t an option I’d recommend a shop vac or any cannister style vaccum with a hose. Get right in the path of their trail and scoop them up anteater style. But note that you’ll have a cannister full of very much alive and agitated ants using this method. You can take them outside far from your house and let them go if you want to be humane, or dispose of them as you wish, but don’t just park the vaccuum back in the closet without emptying it first.
boric acid mixed with something ants like to eat (e.g. sugar) works great.