My mother called them little sugar ants, and I can remember them getting into the sugar pot all the time, and when you put a teaspoon in your coffee, the little black bodies would swim in the dark world of your mug!!
But I`ve searched, no not for them, I don`t have to, they are all over, I searched for them on the Web, and believe it or not, they are even there! Monomarium Minimum! That is who they are. I wish I could type, `In Memoriam` too, but alas!
I read; they are 1mm, and the queen is 4mm, and it is true, but a thousand together is 1m and that is a lot of ants on the kitchen top! They are omnivores, but meat is their favorite. True as well, they eat everything, they can even found a hole in a packet of noodles in a drawer. They are amazing at smelling empty meat polystyrene packets or bones in the rubbish bin. The microwave doesn`t harm them, they can even escape the radio waves. They don`t get electrocuted in the wall sockets....NOTHING GETS RID OF THEM!!
So I searched the Web! I found serious poisons, Borax, Clorox.....and many more.
I found cinnamon, but I don`t believe that one. They enjoyed sharing the sugary pancakes with the boys.
Soapy water someone said, but that only helps for the ones I could drown, soon many more were marching in, and I could surely not try my luck with the soapy water in the wall sockets!
Hairspray! Can you still buy that stuff? I thought they banned it after the eighties, when I also did my share being a young school teacher with puffy hair! Remember the blue bottle..Dippity Do, or something, even my eye lashes got stuck with those!
Alcohol? Well, after sailing and fighting mold, and hearing about alcohol as remedy, I made sure to always find a better cure than alcohol. I do not waste alcohol on anything else but my liver!
Baby Powder? Interesting! I tried that, and it worked, I could follow their tiny foot steps all the white powdery way....disappearing into the pack of Nachos! My ants were clever, they didn`t bother to search for the pheromones in the powder, they enjoyed leaving this new scent for their followers! I read that they communicate with pheromones, a scent they leave behind, even touching each other`s antennae to share this scent. This scent takes them to the food source..... but my ants preferred the soft smell of baby powder!
Oh my, while I am typing an ant is walking all over my notes! What a cheek! Can`t they pick up my hormones? Can`t they pick up that I`ve had enough of them? Can`t they pick up that I am the Mass Murderer in Panama? I read that some of them even make a sound, emitting an alarm when someone gets crushed! Can`t they hear the echoing sound of crushed Monomarium Minimum?
I read that they can walk as far as 200m from the nest in search for food! You see that is my problem! My ants are well rested! They live all over the house, close to the food sources, where the boys spill the milk, leave the mug, drop a golden ball of syrup! They don`t have to count their steps with their built-in pedometer either, they can just walk over the kitchen top for an afternoon stroll to get a snack!
And so I am fighting this 100 million year old species, maybe that is why they can survive me, they`ve been around much longer!
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