You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life! It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line. - Hopper, from A Bug's Life
One thing I love not-so-much about the new abode is the bug situation. It's a bit buggy here in Virginia, or at least, in my part of Virginia. For the first few weeks I found myself killing a few ants here, a spider there. This is to be expected, I thought. In the Philadelphia area we had lived in a house that was built just three years before we moved in, and it had no bug issues. But this townhouse in Virginia is a little bit older - about 25-30 years old - and naturally one could expect a higher level of vermin infestation.
It took them a few weeks, but the resident ants have finally figured out that we have a one-year old who likes to drop food on the floor. We mistakenly left a piece of banana on the kitchen floor for several hours, only to find a line of ants streaming from the baseboards to the banana in fairly orderly fashion. I wiped up the banana, smooshed a bunch of ants, and moped the entire kitchen floor. That'll git 'em, I thought. Get rid of the scent and the food, keep the floor nice and clean, and they'll have no reason to stick around.
Well, the little (bad word deleted) were back in force a day later. There wasn't really anything on the floor to attract them, but they were running all along the baseboards and scurrying onto the floor, searching for food or simply licking up whatever residue they could find. Lacking any ant poison (which is not a good idea, anyway, considering I have a crawling kid in the house), I sprayed some Fantastic cleaning spray directly onto the bugs and their chosen floor quadrant, wiped up the nasty ant carcases, chased down any ants trying to flee my attack, and scrubbed the floor pretty good. I take no prisoners. The ants have gone now for about eight hours. This is a temporary victory, for sure, but it feels good.
I can't keep spraying Fantastic on the damn critters. Thanks to Google, I found a website with several natural, child-safe home remedies to keep the ants away. I will try a few of these and let you know what works. In the meantime, it's just me and my paper towels, shoes, and bare hands vs. those stinkin' ants.
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Above picture of Flick from the Disney animated film, A Bugs Life. Pic found here.
