Diatomaceous earth, dusted around the perimeter, will kill insects by messing with the joints of their little exoskeletons. It’s a fine abrasive powder made from the skeletons of long-dead microorganisms. It’s harmless to you and your pets. In fact, you probably have some in your toothpaste. If you had an exoskeleton, it would get into the joints in your legs. It would absorb any lube in there, and you’d have an abrasive mud. Before long, your legs wouldn’t work. Your co-workers would carry you home and eat you.
So, to summarize, you mix up borax with dish detergent, pureed cucumber peel, powdered chalk, sugar, cinnamon, diatomaceous earth, smear it on an anteater, shove him, some spiders, and a toddler down into the ant nest, and pour boiling water on the whole deal.
Ta-daaah!
If they come back, use 5 gallons of diesel fuel and a road flare
I’ve had ants on and off all winter. The other people living in my house (I won’t name names) just can’t seem to keep crumbs and drips off the floor. Since I’ve seen ants all over my house in small numbers, I wanted to kill the colony rather than just repel. The Terro stuff seems to be working well for me, the idea is they take the poisoned food back to their nest and kill the colony. I got these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00026L1QE
Ants love the stuff. An hour or so after I put out the traps there was a steady stream of ants going in and out of the traps. Some managed to drown themselves I guess, but most got away to carry the poison back to the colony. Now 4 or 5 days later all I see is a straggler or two. I used 4 of the 6 traps, so I’ve got 2 more to put out. If you get those particular traps be sure to turn them up so the liquid runs to the bottom of the container before you cut the end off. I made a mess with the first one. :rolleyes:
Cinnamon works much the same way - they won’t cross the cinnamon. But that merely kept the problem contained, it didn’t stop the problem (either I couldn’t figure out exactly where they were coming from or something) So I bombed the ever loving crap out of the apartment one weekend while I was away and they never came back.
Right – any fine powder, they won’t cross. The funny thing is, we never use anything but the chalk dust and the problem stops. But then again, I do make sure that we get the dust line across all windows/threshholds. In the past, I found that the traps work great to speed up the elimination, but I really, really loathe using poison.
I just use the little traps on each outside corner of my house - nothing inside and no sprays. We get ants that ignore sweet stuff, though, and go right for the dirty dishes with fat or meat on them .