Be Excellent To Each Other

Hullo folks and grr!

Woke up this morning, looking forward to my matey coming up from London this aft, wandered off to make a bowl of cereal and guess what I found in my kitchen. Ants! Literally tens of the fuckers! Not having had an ant infestation before (I blame the decking recently laid down outside) I initially tried to husband the lives of what I thought were a poor, lost scouting party by setting them down in the garden. Approximately 2 minutes later this tactic was understandably abandoned to going after them with a dust pan and brush and washing them down the plughole. I don't know where they're coming from but they've so far been limited to the corner of the kitchen. I figure behind the washing machine and behind the skirting board as likely ant-city spots.

Since I only know how to wage a war based on Sun Tzu's wisdom, and since there aren't any rivers or divisible strengths to go by - and no mention ants in the 'Art of War' index - I am stumped how to deal with this problem.

So, any advice the BETEO people of champions? If this is a long term problem then phew for me already set to move out in July, I say.

Save me before they grow and I have to start socialising awkwardly with them!

You can buy a pen which you can draw special lines that ants cannot cross without instant death. Most hardware shops sell them. Or you can go for ant death powder or gel. But the pens are kind of cool.

I did consider drawing a special maze with a bowl of sugar in the middle, for the ants brave enough to try it.

Chinny, you're a star! As long as the ants don't have a secret lab of ant-boffins working away, things should be cool.

They also can't walk over chalk, if you have some of that handy.

A fleet of magnifying glasses and a very strong light.

Really?

I've worked out a line to draw on the counter and floor, because this aggression will not stand, maaan. This does not sit well with the Pete. And if those ants think they can take my food and clutter my floor well, that's just like, their opinion, man.

Anyway, going to get some pen-o-death this afternoon. I shall also make my friend who is crashing over sleep in the kitchen, so he can monitor the situation. Sometimes military campaigns call for hard sacrifices.

I shall keep you updated on this thrilling war.

Pete's kitchen, today:



"We're going to need a bigger bit of chalk!"

Bleach. Wipe your surfaces with bleach and allow it to dry. They'll soon stay away.

Done and done! I've bleached the floor and the area around the sink where they also might come in, I've also bleachy-mopped underneath the units behind the skirting boards, and flung bleachey foamy water towards the suspected main entry soiliness behind the skirting board next to the kitchen outside door.

Good job too, as it was a counterattack just in time to stop dead in its tracks the latest foraging party of a dozen anty fuckers.

And my kitchen looks spingly spangly shiny new, combined with a general spring clean. Yes. Extra nice baguette reward for me today I... I...

*Gads!* *Bleach Fumes!* *Help mother, I am choking!*

(Pete gets back from excellent night out)

Ahh, fuck. They're back to the number of four scouting ants. Any ideas, excellent chums beyond bleach?

KILL THEM!! KILL THM ALL!!!!!!!

That's not very helpful is it? Seriously, get some ant powder or similar from Wilko's or wherever, and sprinkle it at any entrances. Making sure any children, pets, etc. are nowhere near it.

i do wonder if this was a joke? you do know about ants and how they leave trails etc, don't ya?

You did get the death pen right? You can faff around with the home remedies all you like but what you need are the WMD's.

You need to establish their route though. With us they were coming through a gap in the window. After an hour of trying to find a way around my line of death they gave up.

Nope, walked down to ASDA's but they didn't have it. I'll have a poke about in town tomorrow. The bleach seems to have partially worked though, at least temporarily.

@ Runcle

Yes, it was dramatic license some what. There were a couple on the kitchen step and I brushed them out with a broom absent mindedly when I was clearing the area. All the others went down the sink.

I feel like that guy in Sim Ant. Remember that? It was ace.

Or just get one of these:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Qn_LkOhGg&feature=related

That'll teach those ant terrorist bastards.

@ me? i havent even been in this thread, until now.
hello little ants.

Whoops, Romanista I mean.

Well, you both being with R's. *Cough*

You've started something now, they must have been reading these boards - it's all out war! I've just found some indoors by my back door. Traps have been set!

You should like totally lay out libations of ale for our ant friends, man, rather than killing the little dudes, man.

I think you should YouTube chinnyhill's suggestion of making a special maze of death.

In other news YouTube is now a verb.

Well why not, Google and Myspace are verbs now...

Pete, we had a problem with ants one year whilst I was at university. The landlord came down with something called an 'Ant trap' which he bought in a pack of three from Wilkinsons. The ants had gone by the next day. You have to put the trap in the area from which the ants are entering the room - they are attracted to whatever it is that is inside, are killed and then when the scout ants do not return back to base with any yummy goodies the ants know not to mess with nervous Pete ever again and so leave you well alone.

They really do the job well, and are available in Wilkinsons for not much monkey.

This is what I have, they are reasonably cheap in Tesco too.

Ant trap it is. Unless my manual heartless combat sweeps of ants with a dustpan and brush + sink somehow sends a messge before tomorrow. (And I think it might.) Thanks Mimi and Goddess Jasmine!

Place a trail of sherbert from your kitchen to next door.

Buy an aardvark.

Man, I'd love an aardvark.

Aardvark.

Zzzzzz.

CUS is asleep, but little does he know that ants could be crawling into his ear even as he sleeps!

Oh, I wasn't sleeping. I thought Zardoz was trying to start a 'Let's go through every single word in the dictionary!' meme, so I decided to cut him off at the pass.

He'll probably try and deny it now though. I would normally have a go for that but eh, it's his birthday and he seems like a good guy otherwise.

Anyway, back to It Came From The Desert then. Have you been to the mines yet?

We had a wasp the size of a koi carp in our garden yesterday.

Not yet, no. I have tried shooting their antennaes off with a pistol. Funny thing, I just can't aim straight - my arm wanders lazily around and I have to try and time when it'll be pointed at the ant before I fire. And I'm not even drunk! As a consequence, after that failed experiment my kitchen now looks like a warzone.

Back to reality - there were more in the kitchen today, so I'm taking advantage of this extra day off to go to Wilkinsons, and then down to the Gower for a really nice walk along some beaches. Yes.

Be careful when you ask for it though.

When we had ants coming in from the garden, I bought lots of ant powder and basically lined the way they were getting in with it, as well as dousing pretty much the entire patio with the stuff.

Didn't see 'em again.

Just spotted this. I had an invasion of ants in my kitchen not too long ago. One day I came downstairs and spotted an ant. 'What the fuck is an ant doing in my kitchen?' I pondered, and then my eye tracked another ant, and another, and another.

The immediate threat was manually exterminated (squish) and yet more kept popping up. The area under the sink seems to be the culprit, so I prised off my skirting in order to get under the unit, at which point I promptly shat myself.

Literally hundreds of ants, and ants eggs (ewwwww) were facing me, crawling everywhere. After throwing myself backwards to avoid this evil infestation, I reacted quickly and picked up a can of the the only thing to hand - fly-killing spray. Now, I'm not sure if the ants died due to the fly-killing chemicals or if they did in fact drown, such was the extreme refire rate and volume of ammo used.

The area of infection was wide and they appeared to have set up base camp under a section of old underlay, left under the unit from the kitchen installation. Running low on ordinance, I decided to regroup at the local supermarket and bought some ant-killing power. Following some reconnaisance away from the anterior of the battlefield, I located the insertion point - the wall outside had a thin crack in the mortar through which many ant reinforcements could be seen climbing up the wall, and into the kitchen.

Chemical warfare immediately commenced, the reinforcements annihilated in a haze of talcum death, blown deep into the crack to prevent any possible re-entry in future. The plucky survivors on the front line were also hit hard, dying in their tens and hundreds, unable to retreat, the land as far as the eye could see covered in white death.

After several minutes, with no sign of movement, victory was declared. This left the costly and problematic cleanup operation, as the ground was littered with the dead, their corpses and larvae strewn everywhere.

$4.3bn was secured in aid, but in the end I just hoovered up the remains and embezzled the rest on star bars.

I had a Star Bar on Sunday, and very nice it was too.

I am now too terrified to look under my sink unit.

Though I did attack under it on Saturday with a bleach-soaked mop, scooping everything up - and I didn't spot any eggs there. So I reckon their camp is actually outside under the decking. I didn't find a Wikinsons where I went today, so I'm going to try again tomorrow.

Worryingly, contrary to above theory, the ants seem to be coming up from behind the washing machine. Which is completely away from the wall against the decking, curiously enough.

Nuts to this, I'm calling in help.

Go get 'em, Beetle-thing!



GRRR!

(Taken in the Gower, earlier today. )

Eek!