The book of Proverbs even has two favorable mentions of ants, including one of my favorite sayings: "Go to the ant, you sluggard!" (Proverbs 6:6). In the Aesop's Fable about the ant and the grasshopper, we are all encouraged to be more like the ant who plans ahead for the winter and isn't afraid to work hard.
Nonetheless, these days, I am feeling less favorably disposed to this industrious insect. We are under a veritable explosion of ants, both inside and outside our house. Thankfully, the ants in question are tiny but they are everywhere and there are so many of them!
Every morning, I fill the dog's food and water bowls outside and there are literally thousands surrounding the bowls. I then return to the breakfast table inside and there are thousands more swarming the toast crumbs and jam splotches that have been there all of 10 minutes. Last night, Charlotte dropped a forkful of rice under her chair and it looked like a small party of mountain-climbing ants.
The ants make huge ant highways to transport crumbs - across the table, down the floor, up the wall. I really wish I could get a better picture or a video of this, because despite the fact that I'm repulsed by them, I'm still impressed.
Unlike the U.S. ants I've experienced, I feel that these ants seem to prefer carbs rather than sticky stuff. They always come out for bread products, including a memorable day when they were transporting a cube of stuffing up the wall.
This is our weapon against the battle of the ants: DOOM (best name for an insect killer ever!) Disclaimer: it's not "odourlous." It has a sickly sweet, cloying smell....but it does spell instantaneous DOOM for the hapless ants.
My friend Gretchen said a couple of months ago "You know, back in the U.S., when you think there's a bug on you and it's usually just a fuzz or a hair? Here it's always a bug!" Usually it's an ant.
I did make the happy discovery that putting a few cloves of garlic in the sugar does get rid of ants. There were hundreds of ants in my sugar (despite it being in an "air-tight" Tupperware container from the U.S.) While I don't necessarily care about picking out the ants before baking, it was a huge gross-out factor for my kids when they went to make Kool-Aid. Instead of throwing out the whole 2 kilos of sugar, I decided to try the helpful hint that was included in my HOPAC cookbook. I was definitely skeptical. At first, it looked like the ants were just going on another mountain-climbing expedition - this time on the garlic cloves. But then, miraculously, they vanished...and they haven't returned! I was also worried that the garlic may permeate the taste of the sugar, but I haven't noticed anything.
Although I'd much rather battle the ants than cockroaches, centipedes or mosquitoes (all have also been in our house) or certainly a tarantula (has been at school), I'd like them to leave now, please. Maybe when the rains come all my problems will go away....is it too much to ask that dust, heat, and ants all leave together? We will see.
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