Alright, here’s the situation, we’ve got an 80 foot trail of ants going from my bedroom making a b-line directly for the dog food. I’ve located their insertion point (a small hole in the wall on ground level). Now we must destroy them or all the dogs in my house will go hungry and perish. Worse yet, I might have to buy more dog food.
I’m just looking for some good ways to kill 'em. I’ve got plenty of bug spray, but it’s only a temporary fix. I remember reading somewhere about an apple-brown sugar mix that they take back to the queen and it kills her. Anybody know what I’m talking about. I’m open to suggestions here. Anything effective, or simply fun is welcome. Hell, I’ll even try ineffective if it keeps me busy.
We’ve had fairly good luck with those ant stakes that have poisoned food bait. They’re made for outdoors, but you can just lay a few down in out-of-the-way places inside, too.
No, aunts are easy to kill. It’s ants that are hard. With their little crawly legs and their sectioned off bodies. Not to mention their surface area volume ratio. DAMN the surface area to volume ratio. Makes it impossible to microwave 'em.
They’re in the wall. I’m thinking about just vaccuming them up. It won’t solve the problem, but it’ll take them time to rebuild their ranks while I try and find a more permanent solution. Plus it’ll be satisfying.
I had an ant problem in a dorm room years ago that the Mgmt was unable or unwilling to correct. I could see where they were coming in, but my attempts to plug the hole were for naught. So what I did was got a jolly rancher, licked it, and put it right by the hole. They’d go to the Jolly Rancher and no further.
Try disrupting the trail. Ants navigate by scent, disrupt the scent trail and they can’t find their way to the food. A little vinegar and water on a sponge should do the trick.
You’ve located the insertion point huh ? Well lots organise us a hot LZ close by , set up a command post and initiate a tactical air strike. A liitle it of Napalm , a nuke or two and bingo!! no ants (or aunts) in the immediate vicinity for oohhhh…150 years. An added bonus is the fact that you are unlikely to need to buy any more dog food for quite some time.
Seriously though you need to use phsycology on these guys. Think like an ant…and what’s an ants overriding perogative ? I’ll be dammed if I know but I can tell you that making sure the hive survives is important to them. So we need to have them see you, your family and your dogs as hive members. Your survivial will then become important to them and they will stop eating your dog-food.
You’ll need to get ant-suits of course. Bear in mind that getting a dogsized ant-suit might be difficult so I hope you watched a lot of those craft TV shows when you were a kid. Thinks carboard and crazy clue and your halfway there.
The ant-suits might be useful for throwing them off guard but the fact taht you are 300 million times their size might give you away so you will need to not only move like an ant , but partake in antlike activities and contribute to the hive in some way (i dunno…maybe a car boot sale with proceeds going to the nursery).
Unless you are prepared to learn to speak Ant communication might be difficult at first. Try to keep your head down and dont draw attention to yourself. Pick up what you can. A word of warning though , racism is rife in antland , pretending you dont understand becasue you are a foreigner and saying “ni sprechen die ant” will get you in serious trouble. Ants dont travel to other hives they invade
so unless you want to be taken out as a suspect advance scout just pretend you’re a mute or something.
This will go someway towards helping but as I’m sure you know scent is of paramount importance in the animal kingdom. You will all need to smell like ants to avoid detection. I’d like to help here but i’m afraid I have no idea what an ant smells like. As you have an abundant supply perhaps you could scoop up a few and sniff at them . Let me know the result and we will come up with a formulation for you to cover yorself in before donning the ant-suit.
Make no mistake. Life as undercover imposter ants will not be easy for you and your family (and it will take the dogs a loooong time to get used to). You’ll find yourself isolated and lonely and crying yourself to sleep at night. You’ll feel tempted to confide in the guy down the tunnel who takes the same track to work but don’t…if he doesn’t rat you out straight away his life could be in danger too.
There are benefits though…the collective takes care of its own and you should never need to buy food again. Getting used to ant diet might take a while but you gotta figure 800billion ants cant be wrong. They will be pretty impresed by your size and although you can’t carry 30 times your own weight you can still carry one hell of a lot more taht some scrawny ant. Make sure they notice the opposable thumb thing too …that always impresses them and you can make some great barrom buddies with tricks liek actually holding a beer insteading of simply sticking your head in the glass and swooshing around.
Professional hired killer checking in. Don’t listen to these amateurs. I do this stuff for a living.
cher3 said:
This is not a bad idea, whether you use them indoors or out. But I wouldn’t put them in out-of-the-way areas. They’ve already established a trail to the dog food, so put it across their trail.
GingerOfTheNorth said:
This is also not a bad idea, if you’re overly concerned about excessive use of pesticide (which, by the way, is no more toxic than the cleansers you keep under your kitchen sink). However, you may not be able to find their hill, or there may be another colony close by that is just waiting to expand their foraging range once the competition is gone. Besides, you say the nest is in the wall. So this isn’t really an option.
Cougarfang said:
We-e-e-ll, no. To really solve an infestation problem, you have to find the source and eliminate it. They’ll only find another hole and the problem will start all over again.
Chas.E said:
This is not a bad idea either. At least it shows a little thinking went into it. Vinegar and water will definitely disrupt the trail. Of course, they will most likely make another trail, and see response to Chas.E above.
What I would do is make a mixture of boric acid and sugar. Apply this mixture to their trail and sit back and watch the fun. They will be attracted to the sugar mixture and take it back to their nest, thus eliminating the colony. I love being this insidious, using their instincts against them. They want food, I’ll give 'em food. Thing is, it’s laced with poison, and they’ll unwittingly spread it throughout their community.
I agree with Dave. I’ve used boric acid mixtures on the little beggers since reading this article by the Master yonks ago. Okay, he was talking about cockroaches, but the principle’s the same.
Got to be careful with the stuff around children and pets, though. But it’s great even outdoors with shallow dishes right next to the trails.
Not only that, but a lot of ant baits used by professionals (which work on roaches, crickets, etc.) list orthoboric acid as their active ingredient. Ice Wolf is correct in advising caution, but any application of any potentially toxic material should be done with the hazards in mind, and approached cautiously to minimize same.
We use Terro. You can buy it locally. It’s basically a sweet boric acid gel. (We get bottles & put it out on bits of cardboard - I don’t see that particular format on their website, but we can buy it here.)
Terro II is what you want - I think the original Terro actually had some nasty stuff in it.
Works well, fairly easy, the critters don’t get into it, and it won’t kill 'em even if they do.
