Murder by Death

A few weeks ago I had ants in my kitchen.  To those of you who have been inside there it is no secret that it is not the cleanest place in my house.  Little bits of food are scattered here and there.  Never fear, I finally cleaned that up last weekend.

When I first saw the ants I knew that this was a problem.  I don't know why ants in my kitchen are bad but it sounds like they are.  I don't want insects hanging out my food preparation area I suppose.  That sounds like a good reason!

I went to Home Depot to check out what they had.  Most of the stuff sounded pretty awful.  I balked and left the store empty-handed.  Fast forward to today when I woke up and saw lots of ants crawling around my front step.  I said "screw it" and went to Wal-Mart to check out what they had.

I ended up bringing back a package called "Grant's Kills Ants".  I didn't know using a sentence as your product title was effective marketing.  Anyway on the box it claims to destroy entire colonies.  So far so good.  What sounded bad and which made me change my mind this time was the following sentence: "Ants carry bait back to the colony to kill the queen".  This is starting to sound like a pretty exciting drama already.

This is where it starts to get sad.  This is what is claims to do on the back of the box:
  • Bait attracts scout ants seeking food for the colony
  • Scout ants take bait back home where it is eaten by queen and worker ants
  • Colony stops reproducing and begins to die
  • Weakened or destroyed colony can no longer infest your home
This is what made me balk the first time.  If it hadn't been for that description I probably would have just bought the stuff the first time and been done with it.  But the way they describe it I actually kinda felt sorry for the ants.  I can visualize this thing being played out and it's kind of sad on an ant-level.

I ended up putting the stakes for the poison outside anyway.  So far I haven't seen any ant activity but I presume that is due to the sun bearing down on the colony.  I guess we'll see in a week if this stuff actually works and whether or not I am responsible for ant genocide.

I have no idea why this bothers me.  In the grand scheme of things this is pretty much pointless.  Maybe it's that time of month and I'm having my manstrual cycle or something.

Comments

John K said…
I carpet bombed the ants that intruded my apartment in Berkeley. I then followed them back to their colony and sprayed the hell out of it. Never had a problem again.

As DeNiro said as Al Capone, "I want him DEAD, I want his friends DEAD, I want his family DEAD"
June 3, 2008 at 7:51 PM
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