GROSS.
But true story: Today I was watching The Today Show and they did a segment on how to fix common household problems. One of the "items" was ants; they said that ants will not cross a line of salt. "Gross" I thought to myself, hoping to never have to test this theory.
No joke -- 5 minutes later I realized we had been infested - wholly and completely - by ants. They were having a parade coming in thru the balcony door straight for the cat food. They were alllllll up in the cat food. So I called maintenance who set up traps: 3 outside the door and 1 inside and proceeded to vacuum them up. (I promptly brought our vacuum down to the garage to empty it out so we didn't have ants crawling all inside it and possibly escaping.)
A little while later I check out the trap...still tons of ants pouring in, just walking around the trap. Now don't get me wrong, I know these things dont' work immediately...but seriously? Having to check it every 5 minutes and scoop up about 30 more ants is not success. So after calling Chris, Mom & Dad to see if I was crazy (yes, I probably was) I called maintenance back.
While I was waiting, I decided to try out said theory and poured some salt in front of the hole that they were coming in through. Interesting: They immediately did a U-turn when they got close to it. Hmm, we may be onto something here. Maintenance man arrives sans more traps so I mentioned this theory I heard. "Well shit" he says and dumps the can outside the door, running a line along the whole thing. We watched the ants for a while and sure enough, they just congregated at the end of the salt line, trying to find a new way in. So far, to no avail. SUCKAS.
Kind of an awkward picture... but hey, I took it quickly so as not to undo all that has been done here today! And, I'm pressed for time. THis is from inside the door out onto the balcony (and the photo is sideways..not sure why it didn't turn itself around). But you get the idea. That's the line of salt and an ant trap.I don't think this is a substitute to having an actual exterminator come (he's coming tomorrow) but I"m pretty certain this will hold us over until then.
We had a bad experience with the traps one time where Wendall got a hold of one and we had to call animal poison control so we looked into more natural solutions to the ant issue. We tried cinnamon which worked surprisingly well. They were entering the house under the door frame and we just put a little cinnamon where they were coming in and we never saw them again.
ReplyDeleteThanks Amanda - good to know that works too. I did see that as a suggestion. The guy is coming to spray on Wednesday (couldn't do it this past Wednesday because no one told us the cats had to be OUT of the apartment for a whole day!) So we'll be boarding the cats I guess :( We haven't seen any since this incident but i'm afraid they'll come back!
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