Now that the weather has turned wet, the ants decided to invade the house. I thought I could try and live in peace with them, but soon they began their slow spread throughout the kitchen, sometimes congregating in seemingly bizarre places, only for me to discover a crumb. After hosting a dinner party, they invaded the living room, which finally prompted me to take action. For years, I've heard of using boric acid and sugar; I even tried it once when I lived in Oakland, but wasn't patient/consistent enough to perform adequate treatment. This time, I
searched Google and found a
site at the University of Rhode Island which says to use a 1% Boric Acid, 20% sugar solution. Working in a lab, I interpreted that as 1g of Boric Acid per 100mL of water, and 20g of sugar (sucrose) per 100 mL of water. If you want to do this at home, just follow the recipe given by the website. They say to soak cotton balls in the solution, cover slightly to prevent drying, and replenish the solution when needed. At work, the pest control company uses soda caps (like you find from 2-liter plastic bottles). I decided to try both; soda cap in the kitchen, cotton in the living room. I found the soda cap much easier; not only can you leave it uncovered, but you don't have to refill it as often. The cotton required more attention.
The treatment takes several days, during which you will have to endure a constant stream of ants, but
- It's actually fascinating to watch them
- They tend to figure out where the easy source of food is, so they leave the other areas and concentrate on the soda cap. So, if you are strategic, you can put the cap in an area that is out of sight if you don't find 1) above to be true.
I think within 3 days, the ants were gone from the kitchen. It's been like 5 days since I put the cotton in the living room, but there are still ants. I decided to replace the cotton with the soda cap and am already seeing progress. One thing that amazes me is that there are very few visible dead ants. Growing up, I'd noticed ants carrying dead ants, so I think they must carry the dead back to the nest; they are like the US military these days, not leaving the dead behind.
