First roaches, now ants. We've discovered thousands of them, infesting our house and our neighbors' houses. They're trying to take over our neighborhood. Then the world. Ever since we moved in, we've had to spray for ants pretty regularly. They've taken up residence in Callie's food, her toy basket, Jay's bathroom, our back patio, and the kitchen. We'd gotten the interior of the house under control for the most part thanks to Home Defense (thank you, makers of Home Defense!). But then it rained. A lot.
Apparently, ants like to seek higher ground when their colonies are flooded. And oh, did they. I went out to get the mail yesterday, and when I opened the mailbox door, I saw hundreds of fire ants swarming the interior. We opened our neighbor's mailbox (directly adjacent to ours), and the sight was even more horrifying -- hundreds of ants plus dozens of ant larvae crawling all over each other. We had to use barbecue tongs to get our mail out, then empty a can of Raid in the box. Not fun.
After the mail fiasco, we decided to conduct a little inspection of our house's exterior. Now, I don't know if it's just because of the rain-induced mass relocation, but we discovered thousands of ants nesting in between our bricks where the mortar is cracked or missing. Jay would spray the cracks, and ants would come pouring out. Our neighbor's house is even worse -- ants forming continuous lines along the entire side of the house. We eradicated most of our ants yesterday, but I'm sure more will come. We're probably going to have to go in with our neighbors to get an exterminator for several houses on our block. The ant problem is pretty ridiculous at this point (and apparently has been going on for quite some time, according to the neighbors).
I bet Portland doesn't have ant invasions.
[Side note: Look at this picture and tell me it's not one of the freakiest things you've ever seen.]
3 comments:
If these are carpenter ants they can eat your wood. We had to call an exterminator to take care of ours. They were all around the windows. The exterminator drilled holes in the window sills and shot some powder in there and we haven't seen them since. That was years ago. Gosh, guys. Let me know if I can help. I hope you don't return from your trip and find an ant-covered house.
Yeah, that's pretty freaky. But I have a good one. When at an agility trial in Ft Worth - I evidently picked up a queen ant in my bag and while driving home noticed a couple of ants on my legs. Then noticed some on the passenger seat (with the bag on it) and when I picked up the bag, the seat was absolutely MOVING with thousands of ants on it. Dropped the dogs off and went directly to the car wash with the high power vacuum to get all the ants on the seat, etc. Scary!
Mickey, that's a skin-crawlingly awful story! I would be shuddering for a week straight if that happened to me.
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