Ant House

[deguspice]

The ant's ideal for a home is a secure, dry, defensible place. Apparently this translates to meaning a mailbox.

Yesterday, when I went to get the mail, I discovered that it was filled with ants. They were every inside the mailbox, including on the mail. Some of them crawled from the mail on to my hands. Looking inside the mailbox, I saw lots of ants and larvae. I went inside and grabbed a dust buster and vacuumed up as many of the ants I saw. But there seemed to be more ants underneath the mailbox, so I unscrewed it from the base and found more ants to vacuum up.

When I got done, I emptied the dust buster next to the stone wall (hopefully, they'll consider it to be a good place to live, and stay put).

I'm very glad I'm not phobic about ants, that could have been a very bad experience.

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Wow, yeah. I'm not horribly bothered by ants, but that would have freaked me right out.

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

I would have introduced the mailbox to a can of RAID. You are too kind to let them live.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

Ants are completely a renewable resource.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

sounds like smart ants. good think they were say, not white face hornets...

me? i'd have just taken my mail, and sprayed the hole thing with "ant be dead" and call it a day.

perhaps a ritual circle of borax around the mailbox pole :)

#

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

Borax is on my shopping list (I can get boric acid from CVS, but it's a special order item).

[chocorua.livejournal.com]

IMO we're way too enthusiastic about insecticides. I'm watching the local tick population starting to manifest resistance to Front Line etc., which won't affect me so much once I don't have indoor/outdoor critters.

Nothing in the wasp family is going to be very threatening in these parts till around the end of July. Right now, if the queen has actually started a nest this early, you knock it down and they just fly away, looking for a better place. They don't get aggressive until there's a dozen or more adults with larvae to protect.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

So, um, do you know if Borax works on carpenter ants? When I got home from work today, Kyle looked up from where he was kneeling on the kitchen floor and announced, "We have ants!" and he thinks they are carpenter ants. I really really don't want to use poison, since the downstairs neighbor has a cat (and who knows, we might have one too, eventually). If they are living in the walls, we're kind of screwed, since the outer walls are stucco and presumably the original wood siding is hidden inside it.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried it, but it should work.

A frequent suggestion is mixing boric acid (or Borax) and sugar to kill ants. You can get boric acid from a drug store (it might take a day if they have to order it).

If you have carpenter ants, you might want to see if you have roof (or plumbing) leaks. They like to build nests in damp wood.