What started out as bloodlust against one of God’s tiniest creatures has now matured into a far less violent approach. If you hate ants as much as I do, you’re going to want to read this.
“Sara, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that makes you light up the way you do when you talk about killing ants.”
My little sister said this to me recently as I excitedly explained to her a new tactical shift in this season’s battle against ants. It’s true: I hate ants, and I am obsessed with keeping them out of my living space. Just one tiny ant scurrying down my arm is enough to make me feel like I am literally covered in them for days, weeks, months, and years. Every freckle on my body is now a potential ant that I must smack away. What’s that on my forehead? Definitely not my own hair. It has to be an ant. Better take a shower.
Having lived in Virginia, New Orleans, New York City, and Los Angeles, I have confronted all manner of beasts in my homes over the years. Mice, cockroaches so big I could hear them walking in the next room, spiders, spider crickets (if you’re not familiar, be glad), lizards, house centipedes, maggots, wasps, fruit flies, moths. But no other creature has caused me more long-term annoyance than ants. One tiny ant is harmless. You see it, and you might think, oh hey little fella how’d you get in here? Are you lost? But don’t be fooled. That ant is a harbinger. Soon he will bring his friends. And those friends will bring their friends. Eventually, millions of them will be carrying your skeleton back to the lair.
Phase I: The Origin of Hate
Every day after high school, I would come home with the appetite of a horse. Also like a horse, my food of choice was some kind of oat-based cereal. I’d take the box, milk jug, bowl, and spoon to our small den and watch reruns of The Real World while shoveling several bowls of cereal into my mouth. On this particular day, as I went to pour myself a second bowl of Lucky Charms, the box looked strange. It looked like the logo was moving. Like I had taken some kind of hallucinogenic drug and it was making the whole thing appear wavy. But as my eyes focused, I saw that the colorful cartoon on the box wasn’t moving; rather, something was moving on top of it. A dead chill took over my entire body as I leaned towards the box. It was crawling with ants, inside and out. I looked down in my empty bowl of sugary milk. A single ant was swimming around inside of it. The room spun as the dark truth took hold: I had just eaten an entire bowl of ant-laced Lucky Charms without noticing. This is how disgusting and unfocused a teenager is - watching TV without so much as looking at the trough of food you’re inhaling. I almost threw up, and ever since, I have both hated ants and myself.
Phase II: Fuck Your Cinnamon
Many years later, I was living in Brooklyn when a small trail of ants appeared on my kitchen floor. I flashed back to eating that bowl of Lucky Ants and decided this could not stand. My boyfriend at the time suggested we try those little white plastic ant motels, which are supposed to safely house poison bait (borax mixed with a sugary substance). I grumbled at the sight of them; they looked so gross scattered around our kitchen.
The motels, of course, didn’t even work. The ants seemed to be too small and/or lazy to make the small step up into them. Instead they walked around them like we had just set up a fun obstacle course for them to navigate. We googled our options: many people suggested the natural solution: cinnamon. “Spread cinnamon around the floor boards and along their trail! Ants hate cinnamon!” Our ants, however, seemed to only mildly dislike cinnamon, and again, they just worked their way around the brown powder.
A deep hatred for the insects set in. I wanted to destroy them and their children and their children’s children. I hated the smell of Raid ant spray, and besides, it was at best a temporary solution, at worst, a gateway to lung cancer. At the hardware store around the corner, we found what promised to be the ultimate answer: Raid Ant Gel. The box promised that the gel would “Kill ants you don’t see!” and “Eliminate the source!”
We went home and followed the instructions on the box: place a small dot along the trail and wherever the ants are gathering. About an hour later, I went back into the kitchen to see what was going on. To my absolute horror, there were now hundreds of ants swarming the gel. I panicked, thinking, my God what have we done? We’ve opened the hellgate. But I knew that this was supposed to be a long game. So I ran away and let them continue. A few hours later, I returned to the kitchen, and was completely shocked to see a bare floor. Not one ant in sight. Not one carcass. They had just disappeared!
I mimicked their voices. “Weeeee! Free sugar goo for everybody!” and then, “Okay, boys, let’s head on home….and die.”
I was surprised at how much pleasure this gave me. I didn’t see another ant in my Brooklyn home for years. I felt incredibly powerful, high even. Some part of me was disturbed by this feeling, the sheer elation over murdering an entire city of ants. After all, I am a pacifist, and, at the time, a vegetarian even. But the peace that this mass killing gave me was overwhelming. I was able to control something, for once.
Phase III: Black Toilet
Many years later, I moved to Los Angeles. That first summer, I almost felt excited when I discovered a line of ants making their way to a fallen Cliff Bar crumb in between the couch cushions. It’s on, motherfuckers, I thought. I knew exactly what to do: it was time for the Death Gel. I bought some, and watched it work its magic. No more ants!
Until…a couple of years later, when they returned. But this time, the gel failed, because these little fuckers just kept coming back. I bought new gel, thinking maybe the old tube had gone stale. Still, no luck. What made matters worse, is they were now BITING. Not only did that shit hurt, but it ruined me psychologically. This time, it felt personal.
We scrubbed the entire apartment. But nothing kept them away. They seemed to be uninterested in food. They just wanted in. Why? I wondered if they had evolved to resist the poison. How long does evolution take?
One evening, I sat down on the toilet to pee. My eye caught something unusual in its periphery: a darkness. I looked down, and the entire base of the toilet was covered in ants. They were sprawling up the toilet bowl towards my butt cheeks. I screamed to my boyfriend Scott and pushed the pee out as fast as I could. We decided to lay down all of the gel we had. Maybe we just hadn’t been using enough. I went to bed googling ants and toilets. I actually wondered if one of us had diabetes and our sugary pee was attracting them. Finally, I fell asleep. But at about 12:30 am, Scott came into the bedroom.
“Babe, I need you to stay in here,” he said ominously. “There’s a situation in the bathroom. You’re going to hear some noise. Do not come out.”
I froze. I knew it was the ants, and I couldn’t imagine what was happening that would be so bad he felt the need to protect me from it. Moments later, I heard the vacuum. I’m not joking, he was using that vacuum non-stop for close to thirty minutes, and it was a Dyson!
The next morning, I awoke to the smell of Raid spray and an eery post-apocalyptic quietness in my apartment. Scott was awake, waiting to tell me what had happened. He explained that when he went into the bathroom late that night, the toilet was BLACK. There were thousands of ants all over it. And when he lifted up a small wooden box that sat on top of the toilet tank, they poured out from under it like liquid. It was like they were moving the nest and declaring our toilet Ant Mountain. He showed me a video of it. It was a fucking horror film. After cleaning them up with the vacuum, he caulked all around the base of the toilet, which he had determined to be their entrance.
Shaken, we decided that the ant gel was not only pointless, but also basically like putting up a neon “VACANCY” sign to any ants looking for a new place to settle. Thankfully, the caulking seemed to work, and after a few more smaller invasions, we realized that blocking their entrances seemed to be the most effective way to keep them out.
Phase IV: Wait Blow Block Wipe
This summer, my war against ants has shifted dramatically into a tactical mission of strong defense and minimal killing. What changed? I finally came to understand my enemy.
After our first invasion, I remembered Ant Mountain and broke into a cold sweat. I can’t do this again, I thought. So I googled once again, to see if some new radioactive product had come on the market or if Gwyneth Paltrow had figured out a more natural way to get rid of them while also toning my pelvic floor.
I stumbled upon an article about an invasive species known as the Argentine ant. As I read, I knew immediately this was my enemy.
The Argentine ant kills native species and adds absolutely no value to the natural ecosystems of Southern California. They behave differently than other ants, in that they don’t belong to just one nest. They can go back to ANY nest with ANY queen. They are total sluts. That is why the ant gel or any sort of poison bait does not work. They can take that poison back to the nest, but because it’s all spread out, it won’t be enough to fully eradicate the entire network.
They are really hard to kill. I have observed them still wriggling even after I smash them or spray them with cleaner. Also, their queens are not as powerful as with other species. This explains why, several times over the past few years, I have seen an occasional ant with a really weird long butt roaming my apartment. I had been, unknowingly, in the presence of a cancelled queen.
They do not particularly care about your food, which is why your spotless apartment is no defense. In the hot, dry summers of California, they want the tiny bits of condensation on your pipes. They want your air conditioning and moisture. They’ll pick up whatever food crumbs you have along the way, but they have no real desire other than to just be inside your house. Finally, chemical ant killers like Raid don’t really work, because they wear off and don’t eradicate the nests.
Bottom line: the Argentine ant is fucking evil.
Armed with all this validation and knowledge, Scott and I have a new system that is proving to be pretty effective. It’s what I call the Wait Blow Block Wipe technique.
WAIT: When you see a lone ant, don’t kill it. It’s pointless. He’s an aimless, wandering moron with no useful information to you. But he will bring others, and once you’ve got a good line of ants going, maybe 10-20 ants, you will usually be able to trace them back to their entrance. Is it a crack underneath your baseboards? Is it a power outlet? It might be incredibly tiny - but you’ll find it if you let enough ants gather.
BLOW: One technique to pinpoint exactly where they’re getting in, if you’re not sure, is to get close to them where there are a few gathered (the more spread out they are, the further away from the entrance they are), and gently blow on one of them. This will scare him, and he’ll run back into the hole from whence he came.
BLOCK: Now that you know where the passage is, you gotta block it. Scott calls this “dropping the hammer.” Caulk it (they make clear caulk for places where you don’t want that white look), or put tape over it until winter comes. Make sure you get it covered really well, because these fuckers can come out of the most minuscule opening.
WIPE: Take some windex or other strong cleaner and wipe down whatever surfaces had ants on them. Their trails are scented. Confuse them and lose them!
In particularly tricky areas like a doorway, I also recommend spraying some Raid just to further bolster your efforts - though as I mentioned it probably won’t be permanent. If you have spiders in your home, let them live if you can bear it. They eat ants.
It occurs to me now how my war with ants so closely resembles my battle against invasive negative thinking. For so long I wanted to annihilate my negative thoughts, and often times would take actions that would only bring more in. But now that I’ve come to understand them, I have been able to make a tenuous peace. A few of you fuckers can come in and I won’t panic. I will do the work to keep you at bay, and manage to not make myself sick in the process. We can coexist.
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