Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Plagued with Swarmer Ants

The squirrel is gone and has been replaced with Swarmer ants in. my. home! Really!


Friday afternoon I stopped home for a few minutes and what to my dismay, I saw a large troop of ants walking in formation from my cottage to my guest bath. There may have been 200. No kidding! These ants were no ordinary ants. They had wings - yet they didn't fly! I immediately ran for my broom and swept them into my bathroom and closed the door! Then I stuffed a bath towel at the base of the door and headed to the local store to purchase some bug spray and ant traps.

I returned home and sprayed the room, put out the traps, and closed the door - again stuffing the towel at the base. Later that night I opened the door and was pleased to see they were dead - all of them! I left them overnight, just for security purposes. I cleaned up the floor Saturday morning. Whew! They're gone!

Two days later. . . sitting in my cottage, watching TV, I realized the sun had set and it was time to close the blinds. I reached to twist the wand and what to my amazement - - there, walking on the blinds, were more of those stupid, winged ants! Not only were they there, but they were marching along the edge of my table, almost in pairs, at least 100 of them! They were also crawling up the edge of the window sill and a 100 or more were walking around on the carpet. I ran and got a big roll of tape and ran it across the back of the table and smacked it down with my hands - like fly tape. That took care of those. Then I ran for the bug spray. I sprayed the window, the corner of the wall, the baseboard. I didn't want to spray my antique table, so I ran for a fly swatter. I smacked and smacked them, all the while I had the heebie-jeebies! Finally, I spayed the top of the table and more of the carpet. Then I turned off my computer and TV and closed the door to the cottage, stuffing a towel at the base of the screen door.

I proceeded to spray the baseboards in my bedroom and bathroom. I kept thinking, "I'm going to have to move, or burn this house down! I phoned my sister - just to see if she could shed any light on what sort of ant I was dealing with. Then I went to bed and read some of my book to get my mind off of things - crawling things!

Yesterday I contacted an exterminator who was able to come over. He put down 10 industrial-type traps and told me it's possible I killed all the worker-ants so the Queen Ant will continue to lay eggs. He said I may see another assembly of ants, but to leave them alone. They won't hurt me. They'll most likely go into the traps, eat some of the poison, and take it back to the Queen, which will kill her and then I'll have NO MORE ANTS! This is my prayer.

3 comments:

Sarita said...

I'm so sorry, but the picture of you running around trying to thwart the ants is a little funny. -I'm one to talk though, I've been battling earwigs, which are perfectly harmless (except to my hostas) but cur-eep me out. Terro is A-W-E-S-O-M-E for taking care of ants.

MamaD4 said...

I hope that the traps work Donna! It reminds me of San Diego and how many ants we had. They somehow would always get into our dishwasher, I suppose to eat the food on the dirty dishes. It would be swarming with ants. I just drowned them all (and ran the dishwasher twice to rinse them down)!

Pat said...

It sounds like you may have won this war. I think you should have charged them rent.