Yesterday, I was enjoying a leisurely lunch…
Okay, that’s a lie. I was trying to cram in lunch before having to run to the vets office to buy more meds for Sadie Money Pit. I was eating cottage cheese and wheat thins mostly because it’s quick and easy. Sadie was outside playing with one of her toys, and I was trying to listen to some news when I glanced at the wheat thin box and saw something that looks like this:
An ant! It was only one ant, not a trail…but EWWWW! I jumped up and looked in the pantry. There were a few more random ants.
Crap. I guess it’s time to clean the pantry. I spent some quality time doing that, taking a break just long enough to run to the vets and make sure they are flush in cash, then back to more cleaning.
My life is so glamorous. And given the meds I’m giving Sadie to get rid of any lasting parasites she’s hosting, I suspect it’s only going to get more glamorous in the next few days. Sigh.
I swear, if the ants come back, I’m going to lose it.
Anyone else battling ants? Any tips? And do you all clean your pantry just because? Or only when desperate?
November 18th, 2010 at 8:55 am · Link
:shudder: I hate ants in the house. And I’ve had them in every house we’ve lived in since we got married. (Maybe ants bring good marriage luck.) Anyway, dish soap in a line across wherever you think they’re coming in at usually stops them. I had them bad in the spring, and I couldn’t find where they were coming in, so I had to resort to a product I found at the ACE. I don’t know if it would work for you because of Sadie (it looks and smells like peanut butter), but if you apply it somewhere with a closed door, you should be okay. The ants eat it, carry it home and it kills the whole nest. I’ve been ant free since.
Good luck. And I hope Sadie is parasite free soon.
November 18th, 2010 at 9:41 am · Link
We had ants at our old house, little tiny ones, and never did get rid of them completly. I don’t know how many things we had to discard because they got into them.
Our new house is spiders, not so bad now that its colder, but when it was warmer I swear someone was calling me to take care of one every day. Older son and I are the only ones who will get near the dang things. Daughter is deathly afraid of spiders and screams bloody murder at the sight of one, neighbors probably thought we were torturing the poor girl. It’s all her older brothers fault, when she was little about 4, she was in the bath and I had given her a new black washcloth to wash with. It left little black fuzzies in her water. Her brother, who was 6, had to pee so I went out in the hall to give him some privacy. He told her the fuzzies were baby spiders. She screamed so bad her dad came running in from the backyard thinking she was in danger. Took us an hour to calm her down. Funny now but at the time man were we pissed. That fear of spiders never went away.
All in all though I’ll take the spiders over the ants. At least they don’t ruin food and they come in ones and two’s not hundreds. And it is amusing to watch the cats chasing them .
November 18th, 2010 at 11:21 am · Link
B.E., thanks for the soap and other stuff tips. I don’t have an ACE nearby but I can try the other stores if I can get out of the house. It’s so hard and frustrating to get rid of them.
I personally think Sadie is already parasite free, but he vet insists she needs more meds. I hate giving her so much medicine. She takes it fine, but it has to be bothering her stomach.
November 18th, 2010 at 11:23 am · Link
Val, it is kind of funny! I had two older brothers, and I have three boys so I can’t help but laugh. But I wouldn’t have laughed when it happened either!
Ants are tiny terrorists. It’s a constant battle!
November 18th, 2010 at 11:38 am · Link
I bought little ant traps and stuck them on window sills where I thought they were coming in. You could stick some in the pantry but I wouldn’t leave them down where Sadie could get them. I’m the critter-getter in our house. Spiders, snakes, mice, rats–we have a colony that lives in the concrete block fence out back and I have to put the poison out periodically to keep them from overrunning the neighborhood. We also get possums, coons, and skunks, though the dogs usually keep the yard safe from the larger intruders. (They go after the rats but they disappear into the fence.) Daddy long legs, “stink bugs”, June bugs, and these tree borer things that are HUGE and hiss.
Good luck with getting rid of the darn things. And I’m glad Sadie is feeling better!
November 18th, 2010 at 1:06 pm · Link
Silver, I’ve put the traps outside the doors before, but Sadie can get them now. I’ll think of something.
I’ll leave you to getting all those other critters!