While I find hive minds fascinating–great example of a truly organic computer–I prefer keeping them at arm’s length. I would MUCH rather that The AntMind, better known as Tapinoma sessile AKA Odiferous House Ant, seek a new home.
AntMind disagrees, and has instructed its peripheral units to think of my home as theirs. Until recently this took the form of a trickle of tiny nuisance ants in the bathroom, off and on. I don’t do antly things in there–it’s not like I’m jagging out on sugar–so Mom says they’re after the soap.
I put out ant baits; AntMind neatly bypassed them on its way to the soap dish. I resorted to more primitive methods or, as my old entomology professor used to say, extended dorso-ventral flattening. Squishing Tapinoma sessile produces an outsized, rotten-sweet stink that sticks to your fingers and clues us in to how these things got their name.
AntMind usually goes quiet after I flattened a couple legions’ worth (I’m picturing the antmind doing “Alas, poor Yoricks” all over the bathroom floor). I did a victory dance.
Last month they came back during the blizzard. In force.
As they don’t bite, (I have discovered that they do INDEED bite. Hard.) don’t hurt anything but my pride and maybe the soap, I’d pretty much resigned myself to continually squishing ants in the bathroom–I once worked for Orkin, I KNOW how hard these things are to get rid of. I mentioned this to my friend Tami.
“Ants!” she snorted, “I can fix that. Where’s your bleach?”
Next thing I knew, Tami had unloaded half a bottle of Clorox into my medium-grey grout, giving it an interesting piebald appearance, but it worked: The ants left the bathroom and moved into my office.
I’m trying hard to see this as a victory.
You learn patience when your roommates are Formicidaean. When an ant skitters across your laptop airvents, wait until she’s back on solid titanium to squish, unless you enjoy vacuuming ants out of your computer.
The office is roughly 20 feet from the catfood and another 10 from the kitchen; I give the AntMind 30 days to discover these new food sources.
In the meantime, I’m studying the ants for exploitable weaknesses. I grabbed my macro lens, captured some ants on a piece of tape and tried some not-very-closeups (it’s a MACRO lens, not a micro). And, as in one of my favorite movies, Joyeux Noel, I found that getting to know your enemy changes your perspective.
For one thing, these ants aren’t black. They’re black and brown and amber, they have stripes and, when you look at them head-on, permanently annoyed expressions. Or maybe it’s deep concentration. They have gigantic antenna that extend when they’re lost (or stuck on a piece of tape) and wave about furiously. When you get right down to it, they’re kind of attractive. Interestingly, my newfound appreciation has not stopped me from squishing them.
Each ant responds to the tape treatment in the same way. First, laboriously, roll over (these ants are too small to walk onto the tape and get stuck, so the tape gets stuck on them). Then, free the antenna and see where you are. If the front legs aren’t already free, work first the left front, then the right, then use them for leverage to free the others. Finally, get the hell out of there.
The antmind isn’t a joke; they really DO organize, in ways that far outshine armies and high-tech multinationals. They apply what looks like a hellish form of Six Sigma to solve problems, they rarely seem to agonize over miscommunications in the chain of command so they don’t really need HR and–in what is probably a cautionary tale for this jobless time–they’ve perfected the ruthless pruning of workers for efficiency’s sake. They (literally) don’t know the meaning of “never leave a man behind.”
I checked online for effective ant eradicators that wouldn’t turn the house into a superfund site. One suggested peppermint oil: I can attest now that ants hate it, and will go (for them) miles to avoid it. Whether it actually deters them–the antmind seems fully capable of calculating complicated detours–is another story.
Another site suggested lining the baseboards and corners with coffee grounds. I think I’d rather have the ants.
Here’s another:
“Mix 5 tspb. Of cornmeal with 3 tspb of bacon grease. Add 3 tspb. of baking powder and 3 packages of yeast. Then, put it on something like a canning jar lid and place the lid near the nest. The ants will literally eat themselves to death!”
This presupposes that you know where the nest is, of course. I don’t particularly fancy staging the party scene from Satyricon, ant-style, in my living room.
And according to the info I’m studying, Tapinoma sessile colonies contain hundreds of intercommunicating queens (wow, a true multitasking multiprocessor) with hundreds of thousands or millions of ants. By the time that many ants have gorged themselves to oblivion I will have gone through the world’s supply of cornmeal and bacon grease. I’d be off Southern cooking for life.
Fortunately, things appear to have quieted down tonight; a couple of ants are wandering the peppermint-coated floor like drunks trying to remember which way is home. Nobody (visible) has made it as far as the desk in the last hour. I suspect they’re planning a surprise party for me up in the bathroom.
Sigh.
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Since this post was published, the Antmind and I pretty much stage an annual get-together:
These little effers DO actually bite….or, if it’s not a bite, I don’t know what it is because is sure as heck feels like a bite. We have been battling them off and on since we moved into our rental house over 2 years ago. Just recently, they have decided to bite me as often as they can and those little suckers’ bites STING! Their bites can swell up and itch like holy heck! I hate these little suckers. I know they are odoriferous ants because when I squash them, the emit a funky smell.
Anyhoo…thought I would share my loverly ant bite experience with you, so there you have it. 🙂
they seem to come in waves. I tried to make a borax and sugar bait to kill them but it seems like they are not interested. Next one will use boric acid, borax, sugar and bacon grease. I’ll let you know how it works
I’ll have to give most of these some thought. I’m at a peculiar place with the ants; it’s highly likely they were here first, and the antmind impresses the heck out of me…but I still squish them whenever I see them.
Kat, you probably have a different ant. The smell of these is pretty icky, pretty strong and pretty lasting. Next time we get together I’ll bring you a couple and we can test… 😉
one word: amdro
i use them on fire ants here and it works. it takes about a week and the hive dies.
Method spray works well. It’s a non-toxic cleaner. I’m not sure if it’s the oils in it or if I’m simpy drowning them. I leave the carcasses stuck to the wall for a bit so the other ants will see them and be afraid.
I can’t smell squished ant. I wonder if I lack the genes to recognize it. Far as I know that’s the only thing I can’t smell. Either that or I’ve got a different kind of ant invading my house.
VACUUM! Clordane is banned and although I have a stash, I haven’t used it and need to dispose of it. That used to be the solution for perimeter treatment for termite protection. You might want to see what the current termite preventatives are currently offered. What ever keeps the house free of termites will usually work for ants, unless they’re dropping onto the roof from overhanging trees. That happens, but usually just the big black antd so that and they don’t like to forage inside.
So…my solution has been to vacuum up the occasional infestation. Tedious to do every day, but it eventually works and you can find out what route they’re taking and thus the source of entry.
Ants are really the “clean-up” crew of the organic world. There’d be lots of smelly, rotting stuff around if we didnt’ have them. Sort of like the vultures in Africa who are dying off, leaving rotting animal carcasses around that no one else will clean up!
Nikki
I use this stuff: http://www.terro.com/
In the old house we had yearly ant problems, and the terro, after a couple of days, always knocked ’em out for the season. We’d have a new crop in a couple of months, but they’d get whacked, too. They bring the stuff back to the nest and it kill all of them.
As a child living with my grandmother, after we would peel the skins off the cucumbers for the evening’s salad, she used to have us take the cucumber skins and ring the house with them, end-to-end, to keep the ants away. Can’t say I ever saw an ant inside… but I don’t think anything would cross my grandmother’s path! Donna
You really don’t want the ants to find the cat food – it can become quite the swarm of ants (fast), far too many to squish. If you place the cat food bowl on a cookie pan with a lip and pour onto the cookie sheet a little water it will create a moat to keep the ants out and won’t bother your cat.