There are ants all over my house! They have taken over the kitchen and are preparing to attack the living room. I’ve found ants in the bathroom, ants in the closet, ants in the laundry room. We’ve tried putting down ant powder, ant traps, and even those little Raid ant cartridges that are supposed to poison the ants back at the ant hill. (We have to be very careful with what we use, as we have lots of kitties in the house.) One of the roomies, in a fit of ant-killing passion, even tried to kill them by sprinkling Comet all over the kitchen sink, where they seem to congregate. They are little tiny black ants, and they don’t seem to bite, but they are driving us nuts!
What are we going to do? Arrgh! (Yes, there is some funky stuff on the stove right now, but my roomie just made lunch. They’ve been creeping around the kitchen for WEEKS now! And that funky brown stuff is stains. I swear, I try to keep it clean in order to avoid a situation like this!)
Ours aren’t that bad, but we have the little cretins as well. Also, brand new for the Spring 2003 Season…EARWIGS. If you have any ideas on the eradication of these as well, pass it along.
AAAH! Just the thought of earwigs makes me squirm!
I know it was the rain that drove the ants inside, but it’s a beautiful day outside! It’s been like this for two days now! Why aren’t the ants outside sunbathing, or moving to new condos near the retaining wall? Why aren’t they outside building little ant shopping centers and visiting their little ant friends that live in the neighbor’s yard?
Raid sucks. When I go home today, I’ll get the name of the spray I use. I purchased it from Lowes. I want to say Spectracide, but I’m not sure.
You must take a two-pronged approach. First, be sure to spray all points of entries for the ants. This may be easier said than done. I spray the thresholds for both entry doors.
Second, you’ve got to take care of the ants in the house. I think Weirddave will be along shortly to help you with this as I did a preemptive strike this year and avoided a full-blown infestation.
Combat Ant killer. Kill the Queen Kill the Colony. It will take a few days, but set 6 to 12 cartridges all over where you see them most. There is a chance you are doing too much! Also, remember, it will take a few days ok? It won’t happen overnight. But soon with-in a week you’ll see a diiference. Plus!! You have to let the ants live because they have to carry the infected food in the traps to the colony. If you kill them along the way it will do you no good. Worked wonders for us.
chalk works
the regular chalk teachers used to use on blackboards.
Ants won’t cross a chalk line (it confuses them, they no longer can smell the food. They’ll turn around. SO I’ve heard.
Try and find where they’re coming from, and put loads of chalk markers around the exit/entrance.
Well, I would call an exterminator, but I don’t have beaucoup dollars to spend on something like that, and this is not my house. My roomie is my landlord, and right now he’s almost as broke as I am.
They’re not particularly coming in through the doors or windows. We can’t seem to find a point of entry, really. They’re just there. I tried spreading the ant powder stuff around the stove and such, but no luck. (Don’t worry, it’s the non-toxic to humans and pets kind of stuff, and most of us are fast-food eating fools, anyways.) I read about the salt thing somewhere. We have a ridiculous amount of salt in this house, so that’s something that I will try.
I just don’t know what to put outside, because won’t the salt kill any plants around the house? The last thing I want to be responsible for is killing all the plant life in the yard. We finally got grass growing to cover the dirt patches in the yard.
Find the offending ant hill. Pour a cup of gas on said ant hill. Watch your ant problem disappear. We recently bought a new house and had ants all over the place (mostly outdoors thank your favorite Supreme Being). We tried all the common commercial ant killers and it didn’t even faze them. Tried the the cup full of gas and problem was taken care of.
The little teeny black ants can be kept out with petroleum jelly. If you can see where they’re coming in, just cover the crack with Vaseline or something similar. They get stuck in it and suffocate on the outside, and can’t get through from the inside. Don’t know how well it’d work with the larger ants though.
We were having a serious ant problem, and ant cups and spraying RAID around the house did nothing. The only way we were able to stem the tide was by sealing off all the cracks along the windows they were using as entry points. Get yourself a tube of silicone and seal around your window frames.
I sympathize, Skerri. We’ve had the same problem two summers in a row from the ants coming in after the dry kitty kibble. Last summer we nuked their butts with some stuff we bought from a gen-yoo-ween pest control guy. This year we put down RAID ant bait and have seen nary an ant since the RAID went out. Hope the ants go away soon cuz I know how much they suck.
Hope the ants go away soon cuz I know how much they suck.