We had ants coming into the house. We first noticed a line of them coming from the hall to the cat's spilled food(Otis spills it himself to get attention, anyone looking for a cat?). So I vacuumed up little ant bodies and squashed them while Erick was crying "Eat-you's, Mommy, eat-you's! I didn't know what to do, I felt helpless. I admit I'm too cheap to call an exterminator, but I had to solve this mystery- where were they coming from? I didn't see a trail from the front door, but I did see a few stragglers where the linoleum and the carpet met, and then as the carpet lines the hall to the linoleum in the kitchen, I found some checking out the bathroom too. Apparently, they were coming in from the front door and traveling under the flooring. Boo. So, some may laugh, but I thought that if I had to burrow my way through pepper to get somewhere, then I wouldn't bother. So I laid, no poured, black pepper down in certain "key" spots. I also laid down some sticky fly paper, I caught a lot of ants on those, and my sister said something about baking soda. Needless to say, I felt like I had a weird science experiment going on. Well, the trail down the hall did come to a stop, but I now found ants in the living room carpet and noticed that they were still coming in from the front door, but traveling along the door frame to the carpet. So I ripped of the the molding at the bottom, we need to replace everything anyway, and started lining all the cracks and crevices with sheet rock putty. I'm glad that stuff doesn't stay pink. I vacuumed and then I sealed some more. I would leave to go do errands and come back only to find that I had to reseal or seal a crack a little higher. Finally Adam ended my battle by buying some ant killer stuff and I put it around what I thought were ant colonies and mounds outside. I don't want to claim victory too soon, but there hasn't been any eat-you's for several days! I have also noticed that the ant population around our porch has dropped considerably.
8 months ago