The Pondering Absurdist

I am officially at war now. Over the past several months I have been scouted, then subsequently attacked by a queen’s soldiers invading my house in an effort to steal from me. Lately it has happened more often than in the past. Looking back, it has probably happened no less than 10 times within the past year. The first couple of times I vanquished the invaders easily and thought that maybe I had been successful in repelling the invasions. Weeks would go by with no further incursions, and I would become complacent. Then out of the blue, they would attack from a different front. The queen had some good scouts, I suppose, and they were able to find holes in my defenses. They have finally worn me down to a point of sincere frustration, and I have decided to take some drastic action. I finally resorted to all-out chemical warfare.

Until now, I have been either too concerned for the well-being of my three girls or too complacent to do much about the threat. As a single father of three beautiful girls who works full-time during the week, I’m away from the home for a large portion of the time. As a Californian and descendent of Vikings who lives in the Sacramento Valley, when I arrive home from work during the summer months, I only want to go inside my air-conditioned house and stay there until it gets cooler outside. That usually means until late at night (past the bedtime of the working man), or early in the morning (when I have to return to working for “the man” again). Because of the heat, I have been reluctant to go outside and face my attackers before now, in the vain hope that “maybe the problem would take care of itself.”

Today that came to an end. For the second time in less than a week, I have awakened to find invaders in my home trying to steal from me, and generally just pissing me off. It so happens that on my way home from work yesterday I stopped at the local supplier of ordinance to attack my invaders head on. I had already been planning to go to war with the queen this weekend, but the early assault by her minions this morning made my plans an assurance. Below, you will see a photo of the weapons I purchased in advance of this attack.

That’s right, I’m fighting a war with ants. As a working man with 3 cats, I must leave their food out for them during the day while I’m at work, and also at night in the case they decide they are hungry and need a little bite or two of food. For some reason, scout ants seem to be particularly attracted to cat food, both wet and dry. I have left dry food in their feeder before I went to work in the morning, with no ants present, then come home after a full day’s work and found a trail of thousands of ants coming and going across the vinyl flooring from a baseboard at the very front of the house to the kitchen (where the cats’ food was located that day), a distance of about 40 feet. It makes me wonder “how did they find it… by smell?” Did the scouts seriously tell the rest of the gang that this was the best route to take some food back to the colony?

Lately I have taken to putting the cats’ wet food bowls up a few feet in the air on a cat stand located by a window. This morning I grabbed one of the bowls to start the feeding process and discovered this crawling sensation all over my hand. I looked, and sure enough, the ants had seen through my ploy of locating the food at a higher level on a cat stand. The entire cat stand was crawling with ants. Needless to say, it was quickly carted out to the back yard and placed on the concrete pool deck, away from the house. I discovered that the ants were coming in near the cat stand, under the baseboard where I had previously (at least a few months ago) sprayed insecticide to stop the very same problem. This time I sprayed the entire area with very strong vinegar that I picked up at Home Depot. The strong acetic acid seems to do a number on the ants, but it’s not poisonous to my girls (it just stinks to high heaven and makes my eyes water when I breathe it). The only problem is that it’s not permanent, like insecticide. Once I wipe the vinegar off the floor (so I can breathe again), more ants come back.

With the ant episode that happened less than a week before this one, I found that they had apparently come in through the attic, down a wall in an interior wall closet, then made their way across the floor to the kitchen. With that discovery I was like “WTF?!?” That’s when I made the decision that I finally must go to war with the queen.

As you can see by the photo, I’m trying several defensive methods at once. Today I put down several “ant bait” stakes (supposedly the “best option” to kill the colony, by killing the queen where she lives). I also applied a swath of insecticide pellets around part of the foundation (it got too warm outside for me, so I didn’t get it around the entire house, only the areas where the ants have been invading lately). I’ll go back out tomorrow morning when it’s cooler again and spray the concrete porches, front and back, with the Ortho Home Defense, to lay down a barrier that the ants hopefully won’t be able to cross successfully.

Unfortunately the house was built in 1980, and as I found out with a $13,000 plumbing bill a few years ago, the construction of the slab foundation left a bit to be desired. Consequently, there are some cracks in the slab here and there. If the ants can go deep enough to avoid the ground level barrier of pesticide, they might be able to come up and enter through some cracks in the slab. Hopefully the relatively new vinyl flooring will prevent most access from that potential source.

Once it cools off a bit more, I have another war brewing on a different front. My garage, and the two project cars within, have proven to be a ready source of poisonous black widow spiders. A couple of months ago I bought some specialized pesticide that is supposed to work as a killer and barrier against black widows. We shall see soon…

PA