I don’t know if it happened because I have a little extra time on my hands but I seem to have developed some OCD as it relates to ants. I’m not talking about the garden ants who invade picnics. Those ants don’t bother anyone unless you taunt them by sitting on their turf and dropping some hot dog relish which amounts to a lifetime supply of sustenance that could feed an extended family of 450,000 or so.  

I’m writing about those tiny sugar ants that show up unexpectedly even if you steam clean, de-contaminate, hose down and re-paint the kitchen counters every day. A toaster is a magnet for them and when I see them nervously congregating around a scrap of toast lodged in the coils, I engage in a deviously clever ploy of turning the toaster on and waiting to hear the somewhat muffled screams as they suddenly find themselves on the sun. This does not, however, send a signal to the others. An ant scream doesn’t travel very far. What sends signals are the scout ants who will bring back a sampling of food for their queen. When the queen gives a thumbs up, what appears to be billions of them come out like a creepy crawly Grub Hub conga line without the music. As an experiment, turn on some fast music and see if they all lift a few legs in unison. If this freak of nature occurs, record a video and upload it to Youtube. You’ll either be laughed at or make a ton of money when it goes viral.  

To solve an ant problem, you need to first eliminate the ones you don’t see to get rid of the ones you do see. The queen, the one who lays all the eggs, never leaves her nest. She, like a queen bee, has the cushiest non-union job in the insect kingdom. She just stays there, being fed by the workers and with the help of the live antennae of her people, watches soap operas all day.

What’s the solution? Yeah, we’ve used the traps with multiple openings so they’ll have options to enter and leave as they wish. Do they think it’s an ant hotel? The ad that says Roaches check in…but they don’t check out doesn’t seem to apply here. After check-out they’ll go back and poison their mates so I’m sure a good review on YELP will be as rare as an ant-free kitchen.

The ants didn’t see me observing because their tiny little heads couldn’t look up as I sprinkled powdered sugar to attract them and borax to kill them. I could almost read their little ant lips saying “whoa! What’s this?” as I spread the sugar bait avalanche-like on the counter. I’m sure they were ready to party, but it would have been their last.

You can also create a mixture of 75% peanut butter and 25% borax. Hint: use chunky peanut butter because the ants will spend too much time trying to eat the peanuts, give up and conga line it to the neighbor’s house. When ants consume borax bait, it interferes with the digestive system much like when you eat a greasy meatball parmesan sandwich at midnight.

I stood there one day after setting up one of these so-called ant traps and watched as they (merrily) went into and then out of the trap as if it had a swinging door. I couldn’t say if these were the exact same ants coming and going because they didn’t stagger as they left the toxic palace. Did they meander back to the nest and brag about their latest high only to collapse and be used by other ants as food? Resist the urge to kill all the ants you see. They will carry the bait back to the nest. Ants leave a scented trail that other ants follow. We know this because there are people with an extremely good sense of smell, no job and no common sense. The common household ants infesting your kitchen likely belong to one of four species of tiny ant: The tiniest ant, the little black ant, the little bigger black ant and a slightly bigger ant.

Or you can leave them alone because really, how much can an ant eat?