I have a horrible problem. Ants. They have been with us since the spring thaw, I think. At first, they were a mere annoyance. But ants never stay at the mere annoyance level around here. On my sink and in between the windows are ant traps and squares of cardboard with puddles of liquid ant poison on them, just beckoning the little rascals to come and take a swig. Most are ignoring both the traps and the juice. The few who have tasted were greedy little pigs who wouldn’t share with their relatives. They gorged until they died.
They are gourmet ants. They do not touch the white sugar in the sugar bowl or canister, even though these are out in plain reach. Or maybe they are on the South Beach Diet. Yes, that must be it! Perhaps liquid ant poison is not allowed on the South Beach Diet. This is why they don’t share with their relatives. They are ashamed to acknowledge that they cheat on the diet.
I endured through ants in my box of cranberry nut cereal. They are in the wheat flakes with dried strawberries, too. The peanut butter ball cereal is afflicted as well, but nobody is touching that right now. Perhaps they have had time to build a nest in there by now – or at least a look-out point for their scouts.
If you sift cereal back and forth between two bowls long enough, you can spot and remove most of the little buggers. But, do you have any idea how hard it is to extract them if you don’t notice them until after you have poured on the milk? They are very hard to remove at that point. They are tiny, and immediately upon drowning they curl up into even tinier balls and cling to the cereal flakes, and … well, I have probably eaten a few of them. I am receiving a side to ant knowledge these days that I did not know existed.
I take comfort in reminding myself that ants are very clean. They do not leave doo-doo behind them or walk all over doo-doo and then tramp through my cereal as flies would. They do not leave eggs and maggots around, but keep that activity to their home stomping grounds.
A couple of weeks ago I discovered that they had either found or made a tiny hole alongside the window sill, next to the wall. It was from there they were streaming in. I even had the unpleasant notion that they might be living behind the window frame, not coming in from outside the house anymore. I soaked a cotton swab in ant poison and smeared it alongside the sill, where they were coming in. They are smart and decided there were other ways to get through without bathing in toxins. The ant juice is runny. I am not enthused about having ant poison running down the wall.
Today my daughter made an interesting discovery. The ants not only have an entry hole in the window frame. They now have two tiny holes at the far end of the counter, in the corner of the kitchen, where the countertop meets the wall. They go back and forth between the window frame and the corner holes. My conclusion: they are definitely nesting in the walls of my house. I can’t imagine what else they might be doing, running willy-nilly between those two locations all day long.
I manually kill hundreds of ants every day. I am tempted to put notches on my window sill, like a gun slinger, but it would damage the overall kitchen appearance. Ant juice is not working. The ants must be fantasizing that they are termites. I have visions of the house crumbling around my ears.
I finally decided to get firm — not with the ants (I just smush them), but with my husband. I told him that he must either find a solution, or I would find Orkin’s number in the phone book. Wallets and near-hysterical wives communicate better than calm speech. So he dutifully went to the hardware store and found what I had hoped someone had thought to manufacture–a can of ant spray with a tiny little tube nozzle on it to squirt directly into the ant holes. Tonight, we MURDER the buggers!
The boxes of cereal are already terminal, but I hope we can save the house before it is too late.
Over 50, Still Kickin' 
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