Small Strokes Big Oaks

If you have a house, you probably have ants. No, let me correct that: If you live on the ground floor of anything, you probably have ants. And a whole manner of other bugs, for that matter.

We have a house, therefore, we have ants.

Before we moved in, I noticed a few of them crawling around on the carpet. One of them even ended up crawling up my leg as I was laying on the carpet. From what I’ve seen of ants, though, this was nothing. Usually, I see swarms of them surrounding some nondescript piece of food someone left on the floor. A few ants here and there? Please.

We have a dog, though, and she often eats food and treats and leaves crumbs on the floor. Sometimes, she eats bones that are stuffed with treats. She’ll get about halfway into the stuffing and drop it in favor of something else. We usually leave them on the floor because, well, who cares?

One day, she was looking at one of these leftover bones kind of funny. Tim looked at it and, sure enough, there were ants swarming around the whole thing.

This is what started the ant war.

Tim wanted to get some bug spray/pesticide of sorts, but I won’t allow that stuff in the house. I don’t know why, but recently I’ve gotten really weird about chemicals being used in the house. This applies to cleaning supplies, pesticides, even preservatives in our food. I’m not 100% conscious of all of it, but if there’s a natural way to do something, I’d rather do that. This is for our benefit, as well as for the dog’s. It hasn’t rained here in like three weeks (probably longer, actually), so spraying a pesticide around the outside of the house and waiting for the rain to wash it away would be awful, especially since Penny likes to sniff and lick stuff. A lot.

Tim’s mom recommended we use vinegar to clean the floors. Bugs, apparently, HATE the stuff. Also, it kills them, so that’s maybe an added bonus. So that’s what we did. Tim also hosed down the brick paver patio we have, because I’m sure these ants are making their home underneath those bricks. Spots like that are, after all, their favorite.

Of course, a few days later, all of the ants were still very much alive, but in a different place. They were crawling in our potted plants and in the grass outside of the patio. Within a few days, we could see ant hills in the cracks of the patio again.

They weren’t inside at all, but they were still alive. Now, it was personal. Tim was not going to be beaten by these ants. No way.

Yesterday, Tim donned his battle suit and gathered up his weapons. This time, he chose to use vinegar to not only clean the floors, but also to wash off the patio. He also used two huge pots of boiling water which he poured directly down the ant hills. I’m pretty sure he hosed the patio off again, too.

“You know there’s such a thing as overkill, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” was his response.

“Okay then,” was all I could say, and I went back to my book.

Eventually, he found a new errand to run and the ants were forgotten.

Until this morning. I walked outside to water my plants and noticed that the patio looked a little weird. Dirty, kind of. So I crouched down and got a closer look.

Yup. My patio was riddled with ant carcasses.

Those black dots? Ant carcasses. At one point during my inspection of the patio, a breeze picked up and they blew around, too. It was disgusting, because I really do hate bugs, but I have to give Tim props for finding a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly, chemical-free way to exterminate them.

So. Tim: 1, Ants: 0.