Last Supper

Right here on Facebook I learned of a way to offer the Last Supper to some unwanted guests. You know the kind who arrive without a phone call and barge right in impervious to your thoughts. Indignant as it seems, these guests can care less of what you think and, upon arrival, they don't make any inclination they'll leave in a timely manner.

I guess because they're unaccompanied by uncles, "ants" of all sizes come as these unwanted guests. Tinny, tiny ones are the worst but, I guess, the big buggers are the worst offenders at doing physical  harm. They arrive at our house early to mid-spring by showing up in the kitchen and in an adjoining bathroom which shares a common wall. Each year they arrive, we battle them, they finally disappear, I suppose, to their ancestral home outside in the environment.

This year, after reading about ant control on Facebook, we've seem to have interrupted the ants life style a little earlier. Maybe, by way of how ants interact between each other when they meet. We're told, ants upon greeting each other exchange food buy way of something like a kiss transferring tiny bits of food each time. This process continues right up the line until finally getting to the Queen who remains relatively stationary in the ant hill colony producing fertile eggs in voluminous quantities.

Control what's in the food ants eat and you have a chance to control ant population. Dissolve 6 parts of granular sugar in a cup of warm water, to this add 6 parts (an equal amount) of boric acid, to this add a small amount of honey and mix until all dissolved and suspended in the solution. Place solution in a spray bottle and spray solution in inconspicuous places preferably in trails frequently traveled by the critters. In a few days the active ants will have transferred this food laced with ant poison, the boric acid, back to the colony killing the Queen and interrupting the life style of the ant hill. Ants are prolific so new Queens are born, therefore I believe, this is a method of control not a complete eradication of the colonies because new colonies are forming as others collapse. Kissing their way to the top, ants who ingest the boric acid, do die, also.

Ronald C. Downie