Your War Against Ants?

[Admiral_Young]

For whatever reason I keep ending up in houses that have problems with ant infestations. If there's one thing that I really despise it's ants. Can't stand them. They make me paranoid. A couple months ago we had an ant problem and used baby powder to kill them which seemed to work. Well last night they returned and in more numbers than before. This time my landlord is going to call in an exterminator which he should have done before but was worried about his dog (my roommate and I are like just take the dog to your parents place or your girlfriend's parents I'm sure they'll keep him there until the chemicals do their thing). Anyone else have any ant invasion stories?

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Carpenter ants, big ones in one house I lived in. There'd be debris from them fall from molding. I think we beat them back...it was documented in the movie "THEM!"

If you think ants are bad...roaches are worse than anything. *shudder*

 

[tau136]

Working as a volunteer gardener there was one old guy who refused to use chemicals on any critters in his garden so the back was infested with very bright, very lively red ants with a bite like Jaws on 6 legs. In the end I made him let me put ant powder on my shoes — it was either that or face the insect world's Jem'Hadar every time I pulled a weed.

 

[Yeoman Randi]

Carpenter ants, big ones in one house I lived in. There'd be debris from them fall from molding. I think we beat them back...it was documented in the movie "THEM!"

If you think ants are bad...roaches are worse than anything. *shudder*

Ugh. We had a bout with carpenter ants about ten years ago. Without warning (or one that we recognized anyway) our kitchen was infested with them. I opened the dishwasher and it was right out of a horror movie i swear! There were dozens and dozens of them.

When we were first married we lived in an apartment building. Idiots that we were, we took the apartment right over the garbage room. Usually in an apartment building it doesnt matter how clean you are, you are gonna have roaches. But right over the garbage room? Fuck. Living in THAT apartment WAS a horror movie. If you got up during the night and went into the kitchen, you'd put the light on and there were dozens of them scattering all over the place.

We broke our lease and moved out. We were sooo lucky we didn't bring any roaches with us!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

the insect world's Jem'Hadar

 

[trekkiedane]

Once I came home from school and opened the door to my room only to find a cloud of ants flying round in circles -stupid insects didn't know the difference between outdoors and indoors

 

[propita]

We pay a pest control guy $25 to come out and spray every month. We live in a agricultural area, so there's lots of others pests around, but he's mainly going after spiders and ants. The spiders here can bite pretty bad--sent me to the doctor.

For ants, try "Terro." It's in an orange package and has solid stuff to be set out indoors. Works pretty well. If you find where the ants are coming from, seal it with glue and/or put a thick layer of blackboard chalk about an inch wide encircling it. I've heard they don't cross solid chalk lines. Not sure about that one, though.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I hate ants.

I have learned that ants don't like lemon juice or chili powder. So, if can find where they are coming from indoors, you can put down lemon just around the area to block them. Outside, douse them with hot chili powder.

I use that in combination with chemicals indoors and gas and match out doors.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I don't mind ants, I even think they are sort of cute. I hate all flying insects though and I think I would freak out if I ever saw a cockroach in my home.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I don't mind ants, I even think they are sort of cute. I hate all flying insects though and I think I would freak out if I ever saw a cockroach in my home.

You clearly have never lived in Texas.

In Texas, we have fire ants. They're like Hell's little offspring. Their bite is quite painful, and they are aggressive little boogers.

 

[B.J.]

We had streams of small ants coming in through the walls in our bedroom and bathroom. At first, we just sprayed them, but they would come in another way. I think they actually had a nest inside the walls. We ended up putting down several of those ant bait traps, the kind that has food they can take back to the nest. It took a few days, but they didn't come back after that, and that was a year ago. *crosses fingers* It was actually kinda funny seeing long black lines of ant carcasses!

 

[Roger Wilco]

You clearly have never lived in Texas.

In Texas, we have fire ants. They're like Hell's little offspring. Their bite is quite painful, and they are aggressive little boogers.

Hehe, no. The ants I have here are black, 5mm at most and don't bite.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

You clearly have never lived in Texas.

In Texas, we have fire ants. They're like Hell's little offspring. Their bite is quite painful, and they are aggressive little boogers.

Hehe, no. The ants I have here are black, 5mm at most and don't bite.

Every yankee I know who comes down here and stays for a while has a story that goes something like this:

I was at [insert place with friends] and we were [insert some location outside]. My friends saw this ant pile/saw some ants and were freaking out. I was like, "What's the big deal? They're just ants." So, I [insert some way where the ants get on the person telling the story either by choice or by accident]. Suddenly, they start biting me! It hurt like hell, and my friends, who had been trying to warn me earlier, were laughing their butts off and not helping me now. I [insert some way to get the ants off that usually involves water and/or removal of pants].

Man, I'm telling you, the ants down here in Texas are crazy. Ever since then, if I so much as see an ant, I start pulling out the big guns to kill them. I'm never going through that again. It took weeks to recover, and I was covered in ant bits. It looked awful.

 

[TerokNor]

I also have nothing against ants, but than... we also have no fire-ants here and I never lived in an ant-invested house, however did you ever had to fight fleas????? THAT is hell.
About three years ago my dog had a a flea...or more, which I did not know to that time.
Three weeks later (my dog was with my parents since two and a half weeks, we knew by then she had a flea and she got someting against it) I woke up to find one flea hoping over my bed. I jumped as high as the ceiling. and thought "NOOO! She left a flea here!" Then I calmed down again and thought...oh well...one flea, I just catch it...so I catched it into a glass and thought about what to do with it. While thinking about it, I saw another one (they are small, yes, but still quite visibel...at least adult fleas..baby fleas are SO small, that they are nearly unvisibel...after that experience I am an expert.. ). Anyway, I caught the second one also...now I was distressed, cause I thought, when there are two of them...oh my God. So, even I try never to kill animals, I killed them and felt really sorry for them....until I walked into my living room...barefoot... and a black, very hungry flea-cloud jumped from the car pit onto my feet....and when I say it must have been hundreds or thousends of them its not exxagerated. Actually dog fleas do not jump on humans...when theres a dog around... but when there isn´t and they have nothing else to eat... they seem to enjoy human blood as well!
This time I shrieked loudly and ran into the shower...and stayed in there, cause I was too scared to walk on the carpits in my apartement again.
Well, but of course I had to come out again at one point in time....fought my way outside, ran to a shop bought lots of chimicals and first put flea-bombs (thats what they are called) in each room...after a few hours, when I could go inside again I sprayed everything and everywhere with some more chemicals and then I cleaned everything thourougly.... after 2 weeks I did it all over again. It was an absolutly disgusting experience and a lot of time-consuming work.


TerokNor

 

[RoJoHen]

Never really had a problem with bugs, aside from my crazy day earlier this summer where a bunch of winged ants appeared out of nowhere and seemed to keep spawning every time I killed them. But then the very next day they were gone. Apparently it's a thing they do.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Never really had a problem with bugs, aside from my crazy day earlier this summer where a bunch of winged ants appeared out of nowhere and seemed to keep spawning every time I killed them. But then the very next day they were gone. Apparently it's a thing they do.

Winged ants?

Wouldn't those be termites?

 

[RoJoHen]

Nope, after some research, I learned that they were carpenter ants. The females come out of hiding once a year to go out and get laid or something, and then go back into hiding to have babies. They have wings.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Nope, after some research, I learned that they were carpenter ants. The females come out of hiding once a year to go out and get laid or something, and then go back into hiding to have babies. They have wings.

Oh, I see.

Seems like a darned hard way to find someone to partner up with.

 

[RoJoHen]

It was just crazy because there were so frickin many of them (probably about 50), and I had no idea where they came from! I spent a solid 2 hours trying to kill them.

 

[Mary Ann]

We had a problem with ants in our old house but someone suggested I pour washing-up liquid where the ants came into the house. It worked quite well, though I had a major freak-out when the biggest ant I've ever seen--I'm assuming it was the queen--was seen climbing up the stairs. Usually I'm an animal lover but that monster ant was history VERY quickly.