A war on ants

As the days get warmer, and we stop fighting seasonal affective disorder (SAD). There’s a new battle that begins, and it’s not a battle with our own selves or emotions but a battle with nature. Ants.

Ants are lovely and helpful insect except when they’re taking over your kitchen and scuttle around the floors and sides. My wife and I have tried everything from putting powder and traps outside to making the kitchen spotless. So far, none of this works, and we’re not sure how or if we won it this time last year.

We keep going through the same motions of pulling out the cooker and washing machine to clean up anything that fell down. We also make sure there are no filthy dishes left on the side or food in our kitchen food caddy. However, they still want to come in and raid our kitchen.

The Roman Empire

Casey Neistat covers this beautifully in his YouTube video titled “A war on ants”. (Yes, I did still his title. Please don’t sue me! 🙈)

Basically, he says that no matter how many you kill and how often you think you’ve won the battle, you haven’t. They’ll keep coming back for more, and you are literally fighting a losing battle. He brings out a book on Rome to (I assume) find out how they were beaten so he could use the same techniques to beat the ants in his home.

His situation is a lot worse than mine. However, the process is very similar. Pin down the ant’s nest, cover it in powder and hope it kills all of them. If it doesn’t, then that probably wasn’t the nest, or there’s another nest elsewhere, and no, they have bred out of control.

Last year, we also had the issue of them coming into the front room from outside. I remember working from home and feeling them walking on my feet and legs. I would look down and see these black insects crawling all over me. I’d brush them off, look around to see where they’re coming from and not being able to figure it out. They were always so dispersed that I didn’t know where they came from. I poured some powder on the outside wall near the place I sit. Did it work? Did it heck!

False sense of security

You think you’ve won the battle as they start to drop down in numbers, but you definitely haven’t won the war. They go back to their nest and hibernate until it gets warm again. This time next year, we’ll be going through the same motion, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Lay more traps, get more ant dust, and pray to whoever you believe they’ll disappear soon. 🙏