War of the Ants

I don't like ants. I know they are one of God's creatures and they don't bother me when they are outdoors. This is their proper habitat. But when they enter my domain...let's just say the battle begins.

Last year was the first time that we had what I would categorize as a problem with ants. I may have only seen a total of 50 but they were crawling up my walls and into my cabinets. That was just not ok in my book. So, we called the exterminator. They came and assessed the situation and then sent the technician within a couple of days. The technician sprayed the perimeter of the home, the siding, took care of areas indoors and set bait traps for the ants. She did an amazing job because I think I saw maybe 5 ants the next day and that was it. No more. Hooray!

This June I spotted a few ants and decided that I would save our family some money by taking care of things myself. So, I geared up - found an environmentally friendlyish spray and took care of the perimeter, windows and entryways. I was pretty proud of myself. Didn't see anymore ants for about a month. I should have done that again but didn't. I had no idea what was in store for me.

July and the beginning of August were busy with vacations, getting ready for school, etc. I started to see ant activity again...confined to the kitchen. I was still confident that I could handle this - they are just ants and I apparently had won the previous battle. So it was me vs. the ants for over a week. Every morning there were about 10-20 that I would deal with abruptly and then we would be ant free for the rest of the day. And then it happened...the ants implemented their new battle plan.

My morning was very easy-going; boys were dressed and ate their breakfast and I had 15 minutes before we had to leave for the bus stop. I decided to get the morning's dishes in the dishwasher and get the load started. When I opened the dishwasher I saw lines of black (I want to say "sea of black" but that is overexaggerating just a bit) pouring out of my dishwasher! Soooooooooo gross. They were moving in all different directions around my cabinets. Yuch. Yuch. Yuch. I yelled and then started killing them as fast as I could. I was frantically doing this for about 10 minutes straight. Meanwhile, I had allowed the boys to watch the last 15 minutes of Clifford so they were in the family room and Simms was upstairs getting ready for work - completely oblivious to the combat that was occurring a mere 8 feet below him! I must have killed over 100 ants (that estimate may actually be a little low) and some indoor safe spray helped me abolish the rest. TOO MANY ANTS. I couldn't take it anymore! I could not deal with this day in and day out! I was not trained for this kind of combat and it didn't matter anymore how much money we could save...I needed reinforcements - professionals trained to rid my home of these intruders!!!

Simms lovingly made the call and within 3 days a technician arrived. Thankfully they have a 30-day warranty because we had him back 3 more times!!! I kid you not. Guess what...we had 3 types of ants and multiple colonies!!! Pharaoh ants, odorous ants and pavement ants. According to the trained technician, the first two are actually capable of living in the walls of your home - therefore, if you do not destroy the colony there is a chance that you will deal with ants all year round. This was not a possibility for me. I couldn't live with ants. God knew this. I even prayed about the situation "Lord, all you need to do is speak the word and they have to leave!" I let the ants eat the bait and watched them walk along their trail so that they would regurgitate the poisonous food and kill the queen and babies. I cleaned my dishwasher thoroughly and we ate on paper and used plastic utensils for almost a month. I had reached my limit and couldn't deal with them anymore - I didn't want to see them or feel them crawling over my feet. No thank you.

Now, I know more about ants and their activities than I ever cared to. I am a biologist NOT an entomologist. I believe they are gone for good (this season anyway) and am planning on having Simms take the measures that were suggested by the technician to prevent them from returning next year.