Sunday, June 29, 2008

the ants go marching

We had a lovely rain on Friday evening, which I talked about. Saturday ever-vigilant Raine came and told us, "There are ants." Ron went to check it out. There WERE ants! It looked like they were swarming. In our house. Lovely.

Ron took down the curtains (into the laundry they went) from the front window... they were all over the place around the front window, floor to ceiling. He sprayed them with poison and we waited and we watched. This morning we vacuumed and wiped. Ron caulked the windows, hoping that would prevent entry. We kept watch for them, and everything seemed OK, so we put everything back and, well, this afternoon, there were some more. Not as many, but still plenty. Once again the process of getting rid of them.

We are hoping they are not from a colony that is in our cinderblock walls, splitting and branching out into the house... (and why inside???). We will try to prevent these from getting started inside the walls, although I'm not sure how we can be sure of that.

Now, I am not phobic of ants, although I certainly don't want them living inside my house. Not even inside the walls. When I was a small child, I had a recurring nightmare that ants were crawling all over the walls of my room, and across the bed, and they were stinging me. My parents would have to come to my room, look everywhere for any sign of an ant and then, finally, maybe, I could go back to sleep. Looking back, it was probably that an arm or a leg fell asleep, and was tingling as it woke up that would trigger this dream for me. Still, I certainly would NOT be happy to wake up in the night to that dream coming true...

2 comments:

Fran said...

This is yet another reason that I'm glad we're not down there. Y'all have some of the most amazing insect life, and it all wants to come INSIDE THE HOUSE! I'm glad Raine loves bugs and you can handle them, but I'm the one who believes that if it's got more than four legs, it's gotta die.

We have the occasional spider, and they're small and generally freaked out. We sometimes have ants, but not so often.

Good luck!

Unknown said...

We've been seeing the ants in the front yard. so far the barrier to the house has not been broken with the rain. But, I know it will happen. I know I'm supposed to be an environmentalist, but you know what, poison has found a permanent home in my house. See, I figure I don't care what animal, bug, weed etc you are, if you're not paying rent and I didn't invite you over.... you have a date with poison, and I'll smile gleefully as I spray.