I've had an ongoing battle with ants for the whole time I've lived here. My windows are open 362 days per year. Yes, I have to close the windows for about three days when it's cold! Other than that, the windows are open. I have screens, but they're not sealed like you would find in the States. Even when the windows are closed, they're not sealed tightly. The ants can pretty much come and go at will.
So, I battle ants. I don't mind them too much on my floors. I just step on them and sweep them up. The ones I most battle are in my kitchen. I DON'T LIKE ANTS IN THE KITCHEN!! My kitchen is kept clean. I'm washing dishes while I'm cooking. As soon as I'm done with a particular pot, pan, utensil, whatever, it's washed. I wipe the counters continually. Yet, the ants take over my counters.
If I happen to miss a spot where some food has been, perhaps a bit of fruit juice, or a splatter of grease, forget it. I come back to a black blob of ants. Hundreds, thousands or maybe even millions of them.
And the ants come in many varieties, too. I'm not sure, but it must depend on the season. I've seen at least 4 or 5 different types of ant in the kitchen. Thankfully, no fire ants. I still have scars on one foot from where I found the fire ants at my parents' house last January.
I've tried several different ant remedies, commercial and homemade. I've sprayed the counter with straight vinegar, with bleach, tried homemade Terro, roach sprays, and a Terro-type ant gel called Combat. They all met with mixed results -- none of which were really satisfactory.
Yesterday I was at Maxi Dispensa, the new Wal-Mart subsidiary store that is across the street, next to Pizza Hut. (Comayagua is growing!) Anyway, I decided to look at the bug spray shelf to see if I could find something that might work. I've checked before and nothing has caught my eye. Yesterday was different.
I spied a product in a spray bottle, called Baygon. The label says it's for "cucarachas e insectos rastreros". I wasn't quite sure what the "rastreros" meant, but thought it might mean 'crawling'. I looked at the back of the bottle and it had drawings of lots of insects, all the ones it's effective on. Right there in the middle of the drawings I saw "hormigas", ants. I quickly put the bottle in my cart.
I sprayed the Baygon at the bottom part of the window above my kitchen sink. Squirt, squirt, squirt. And a bit on the outside ledge.
Well, here it is 29 hours later, and I'm happy to report that I'm ant-free. With just that one application. I keep going over to the counter and sink to check for ants. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I don't know how long it will last, or if the efficacy of the spray will diminish over time. I don't know how often I'm going to have to respray. I don't know if the ants will build up some kind of mutant-like immunity to the stuff. But until that happens, I'm going to enjoy an ant-free zone.
Baygon has made my ants-be-gone...
We had ants at our old place. I had finally reached my threshold and followed one back to the nest. It took half an hour to the first nest and another hour to follow another ant to the satellite nest.
ReplyDeleteThe main nest was in the wall next to the front door where the gutters weren't channelling all the water to the down spouts. There was a place where the water was getting into the wall. Ants really like to burrow in moist wood. We tore part of the wall down and found a huge nest containing the queen.
After dousing that nest with Raid, I noticed an ant trail leading off into the yard. I followed that ant to the nest in the retaining wall and doused it with Raid as well.
Dan B.
That sounds like a lot of work, Dan. So far, I'm pretty happy with the spray I found. I did spray some outside last night, into a crevice where I know that ants are nesting. We'll see what the long term effect is.
ReplyDelete