The Ants

Since I have a little bit of free time over the Christmas holidays I've decided to post a few silly little blogs about what consumes my days here.

The Ants

A Love / Hate Story

(They love us and we hate them.)

Here is the story of the Ants.  At this point I can only hope it has a happy ending.   

Yes, we had ants in our old house.  A few here or there, some big, some small, some came in for the crumbs or last sip of coke left in the coke bottle, some came in to get out of the rain, and some came in to collect and carry away dead roaches.  When they came we simply swept them away and didn't think too much of it because it wasn't very often that they came.  

Then we moved to our new little house by the Church.  We love the convenient 1 minute walk to Mass and to the rectory for meals, waking up to the Church bells, and the surprising lack of roaches (unlike the old house where we often battled flying roaches in the evening hours).  ... What we don't like are the ants (and the spiders, but that's a whole different story).  We believe the ants were here before us and refuse to move out.  It's my mission in the next two weeks to make the ants understand we're not leaving and this house is simply not big enough for 7 women and a billion ants.  Someone has to go.  

I remember our first day here, we stopped moving beds, closets, and suitcases to drink water and I heard someone ask "Why are there all those ants by the front door?!"  sure enough, there's a swarm of ants having a welcome party right at our feet.  We all pondered why they were there as it couldn't be food left out, there was no food in the house yet, and we didn't see any spider or roach carcasses lying about.  We swept the whole lot of them out the door and didn't think too much about it.  

Two nights later the guys are over, popcorn is being made, and some petty issue is being debated, a typical evening amongst the volunteers.  When all of the sudden someone in kitchen area starts cursing and swiping at their feet.  We soon realize there are ants EVERYWHERE in the kitchen.  By everywhere I mean in the sink, on the countertop, crawling up the walls and down the cabinets in little rows, in the trashcan and on the floor.  Now let me explain to you, we have two kinds of ants residing with us.  These happened to be the Tiny Crazy Ants.  That's not their scientific name but what we have dubbed them because they are so small and a strange light brown color you can barely see them sometimes and when you attempt to smash them they start moving at double or triple speed in a haphazard way going nowhere in particular.  So, that night as three of us worked together to sweep off the ants from the walls, countertops, and cabinets without getting bit (did I mention they bite?  Oh yes, they bite like fire ants, but unfortunately they do not stay outside in your yard like fire ants usually do) we all realized we may have an issue on our hands.  Fortunately that night we had a can of ant and roach spray.  We were using it freely until we saw the other kind of ants on the bathroom door near the kitchen.  The other kind of ants we have are the big black ants.  They are really big and pretty slow.  They have yet to bit anyone and we don't know why they stroll around the bathroom door and back door.  Once we saw the big black ants we went to town with the bugspray and finished off the bottle.  

It was the second night in the house.  We THOUGHT we had solved the problem.  We THOUGHT we got rid of the ants.  How silly and naive we were then.  

The ants have not moved out.  In fact, they really toy with us now.  For a week we'll see less of them and think we're doing better, watching our crumbs, sweeping the floors daily, not leaving any empty coke bottles out.  But then they come back... they eat everything, we can't figure it out.  Why would ants be so interested in my cup of water I left on the table overnight?  Who knows, but there they are lining up all the way from the window across the wall and up the table just to get some water and then promptly drown.  

You may wonder why we don't use the ant/roach spray that worked that first night.  If it were cost effective (meaning we had an income and not a stipend and it kept the ants away for more than 48 hours) we probably would.  Since it's not we've been exploring solutions we've heard from the locals.  The ants must be a problem for everyone, right?  Although we've tried several things, it turns out most people just live with the ants and work around them.  No wonder why the ants haven't moved out since we moved in, no one else makes them move out!  The best invention I've seen for keeping ants off breads and sweets is to put the package/plate/container balanced on a drinking glass and then put the drinking glass standing in a bowl of water.  The ants can't cross the water in the bowl to crawl up the glass to get the food.  It's quite inventive and all the dead ants swimming in the water is a bonus.  But you still have the live ants marching on the table all around the bowl of water.  

The night before the volunteers left we were all beat and decided just to relax and watch a movie.  I was lying on the couchbed waiting for the girls to return from dinner when I noticed right beside me was a line of tiny crazy ants.  I followed the line and saw they were entering and exiting through the window.  Upon following it the other way I saw they were marching right across the couchbed down the other side and scattering across the floor in every direction.  For some reason this upset me more than it had in dealing with these little buggers since September. Where are they going?  Why are they here?  WHAT DO THEY WANT?!  They're everywhere!  I hate looking down at my arm and seeing a tiny little ant crawling on me!  At any given moment I believe I have 5 to 10 ants on my body!  This is when my frustration became an obsession. I WILL get rid of these ants.  I promptly ripped the sheet and bedskirt off the couchbed and threw it in the washing machine, swept the ants off the wall onto the floor and out the door, and waited... watching... and waiting for their next attack.  

It is my mission to figure it out before my roommates get back from Christmas break.  One of the girls actually said "I can't wait to be home and not have to look down randomly and see an ant on me"  What a lovely surprise it will be for them if they can come home to an ant-free house!  We shall see.  We shall see. 

For the first 4 days I washed the kitchen table with dish soap, lots of dish soap.  I would come back later that day or wake up the next morning only to find they were meandering about on the table again, just roaming around with no particular purpose.  I'd wash the table again, lots of soap again.  For 4 days this went on.  And then finally, one day I came in and they weren't there... I'm sitting at the table this very instant without a single ant beside me.  I would be more excited but I'm not sure if it was the dish soap or if they're playing with my mind.  They're still meandering about on the bathroom counter right now, sigh, now that the table and kitchen have been won (I think) the bathroom is my next battle.  

I'll promise to update you on the ants.  Until then, don't feel sorry for me.  Seriously, they're just ants!  Besides, it gives me something entertaining and useful to do on my Christmas break!  May you have an ant-free and very merry Christmas!  

Tiny Crazy Ants hanging out on the bathroom counter.  Told you they are tiny.  

Chapter 2

Apparently the ants keep up with my blog postings.  Above is the picture of the bathroom counter.  And the very next day I go into the bathroom to find an entire ant community has moved onto the counter and is partying around the sink area.  Why?  What changed in my bathroom in 24 hours?  I'm don't know and I'm the only one here.  Nothing changed!  I decided to let them be and focus on the leaky pipes under the counter as it was my objective for the day.  When I went to find the PVC glue I found a drawer full of the Big Black Ants.  Even though they have been known to be friendly in the past I didn't really want to push their friendliness.  I doused them all with soap water and cleaned up the carnage later.  Here's a pic of one of the dead big black ants in the drawer.  

 After I attempted (unsuccessfully) to fix the leak I went to take a midday nap, it is Christmas break after all!  Late in the afternoon I came into the bathroom to check the leak and strategize and noticed all the ants were GONE!  Well, I mean, there were still those 5 -10 meandering about, but the entire community had relocated!  Apparently they were just staying for 24 hours and then passing through.  2 and half years here and I still can't figure out the inner workings of the ants.  

I felt better about my lost battles when I went to the guy volunteers' house last night.  I was shocked when I saw an immaculately clean countertop and sink in the kitchen!  Let's just say the guys' house isn't known for it's cleanliness and leave it at that.  Another volunteer's mom is in town visiting and like every mother I know, she couldn't just sit around when something was desperately in need of being cleaned.  I complimented her and she told me to check out the bathroom sinks as well, haha!  But, right in the middle of that amazingly clean sink was a swarm of ants attacking a fork that hadn't been washed immediately after use!  ahhh, see, it's not just me.  Even a mother's cleaning won't stop them!