The Ant Queen has marshaled her troops once again. Over the weekend the little Amazons launched their forays with great élan. In fact, they did something no one would have thought possible for Ant nor Man: raided a big pot full of dishware soaking in Dawn detergent. Apparently the prize of cooking oil floating atop the toxic stew was too much to resist.
Saturday night M’hijito came over and we prepared one of our amazing feasts: an entire bag of Costco mussels, steamed in butter, garlic, and white wine. Now those were good!
Of course, a large project like this creates a large pile of dirty dishes, none of which I happened to feel like scrubbing after having spent half the day eating and drinking. So I hauled the huge kettle we’d used out to the garage utility sink, dosed it mightily with Dawn, and filled it to the top with soapy water. Dropped a couple of smaller pans into it and went on about my business.
Come Sunday morning, I opened the door to the garage to drop something in the recycling basket, and HOLY maquerel! The place was a-swarm with busy ants!
Busy, biting ants.
They’re raiding the trash basket — apparently we’d dropped something nummy in there. But then I look over at the sink and find three times as many of the little gals charging the giant soup kettle as are dallying with the trash can.
WTF???? They actually were attacking a potful of Dawn detergent!
And they were brooking no competition.
Braving a barrage of bites, I charged into the breach. Dumped the water down the sink (damn! Was there that much grease in there? How clogged can a sink clog?) and blasted the Enemy’s troops with a squirt cannon loaded with Dawn.
Bugs hate Dawn. It kills them dead.
They went on the retreat. Followed them to a crack under the garage’s side door, whence they had entered my territory.
Not just any crack. It appears the Hive is actually under the slab there. They weren’t exiting through a crack along the door threshold. They were disappearing into it.
Interesting.
Sprinkled food-grade diatomaceous earth along their retreat route and all along the door’s little concrete threshold. Especially around the entry to their Castle.
Before long, the survivors had disappeared.
I suspect they’re not gone. For the nonce, though, they’re in abeyance.
Our kids sandbox is getting innundated with water and bugs. I hopefully have come up with a solution for the water, and I’m thinking that might help with the bugs as well (bugs like damp places, take away the dampness, and maybe…) but if not, I need to take a deep look at some options to keep them away. I know it’s outside so bugs will exist but I refuse to allow a whole colony set up shop there.
In Florida? There should be a lot of geckos in that part of the world. And other types of lizards, maybe. Try making the place insect-predator-friendly.
Install a bird feeder not too far away from the sandbox. Mockingbirds, woodpeckers, and those of that family eat bugs in vast quantity. Sparrows, housefinches, and towhees also eat plenty of the darned things.
Spiders, if you’re not scared of them, do the job on bugs.
Keep the cats out of your yard so that geckos and birds can thrive there. And don’t spray. Insecticides kill arthropod and insect predators on bug pests.
Check out the products available from an outfit called Arbico: http://www.arbico-organics.com/ . They carry a number of beneficial insect predators that go after a variety of harassments. Cultivate these critters, and you’ll de-cultivate the nuisances.