Argentine ants

Ants are really annoying. I hear you. *pat*

I sure don't have as many as sarah, but there's this one ant who drives me up a wall. She wears the most awful perfume and always comes over un-announced.

I tried Raid, it didn't work. What's this Terro stuff?


Richard

I know.

I remember when Terro was arsenic mixed in sugar syrup. A few people used it as a poison to commit murder. Now it contains boric acid which will still make you sick, but you'd have to ingest a whole lot of it to kill.

Richard

Wow! Sounds like you need an anteater to help you (pardon his language).

Better Argentine than Brazilian - at least those little guys do not pack a sting that makes you cry.

Just be glad they aren't fire ants. Are you in Argentina, or just using the name to describe them?

If you follow their trail you may discover they are going to something. When this happened to me, I found they were going to the honey jar (solvedthat problem by putting the honey jar inside a coffee jar with a screw type lid). Then I back tracked to where they were coming into the house and discovered the carpenter had failed to completely caulk the outter edge of the new window. Did that.

You do need to break - clean - a large section of their path/trail because the follow a chemical scent and will keep going on the same trail until they've collected all of whatever it was they discovered.

Then, and this only works if you don't have cats, I spread a thin row of catnip along the edge of the window. I've been told ants won't cross catnip. They didn't but the caulking and sealing the honey might have done it.

In the hot weather they sometimes come inside looking for water. A shallow pan in the backyard will give them water.

Now here is why you might think twice before killing off your little sugar ants. I've been told by 'bug' specialists that a colony of one sort of ant will fight off a colony of another sort. So if you have a large colony of sugar ants they will do everything they can to fight off fire ants and keep your yard for themselves.

If you do have fire ants you can buy insant grits and sprinkle them around the mound. Eating instant grits seems to kill them. Don't put a lot out, you don't need to and you don't want the birds eating the to-be-hydrated grits, not good for birds or pets.

Disclaimer - no degree, just lived in the south USA for my entire and ants are a constant.

I once found a whole colony of Canadian ants in my backyard. They were very quiet and polite, and always wore plaid flannel shirts. Drank a lot of beer, too.

Ants creep me out, because there are usually so many of them. We lived in a house a few years ago and had an ant problem. My son was crawling at the time, and I found him covered in ants in the living room. Called an exterminator that day. Sprayed around the house, and set these traps in the yard, and we didn't see any more ants that summer. He told us not to bother just killing the ones in the house, because the queen will just keep sending more out.