Ants

With the spring rains and the warm temperatures, our home (and our yard) has blossomed into a retreat for ants of all shapes, sizes, and appetites.


In order to keep myself from completely flipping out, i'm trying to remember the Safari Ants that we had to deal with in Africa. We would walk through a trail of Safari Ants without knowing it until they had managed to walk up through our clothes and they all decide to bite at once! Their little pinchers keep them hanging on pretty fiercely - people have been known to fully de-clothe to get these buggers off. They also had a reputation for killing chickens. We eventually learned what kind of atmospheres were attractive to safari ants and were able to look for them before they found us (sometimes). but when we were first there, we learned the hard way how to detect and avoid these guys. okay, in that light, our current ant situation isn't THAT bad, is it?


We have ANTS!!! Even since about February / March, we've found small concentrations of ants in our house. Especially beneath our recycle bag and underneath the cold beverage refrigerator in the laundry room. They have also been found in my laundry hamper (i'm thinking my starbucks aprons are quite the feast). We have set up murder-feasts for them, and they have lowered the number of ants under the fridge but they are still in our recyclables. I have been better about placing dirty starbucks aprons in the laundry. But more recently, we have found them in a line from our bathroom window to our medicine cabinet. I think they like my listerine! stupid little jerks.


These guys are giving me issues. I'm told they might be carpenter ants. but i'm not sure what they are doing in my kitchen cabinets and pantry. One morning, i was (hardely) awake at 3:30am, and i opened the kitchen cabinet to have a bowl of cereal before i headed off to work. i was very tired, and when i opened the cabinet a dozen ginormous, juicy, black ants fell out and scurried across the counter. i literally screamed! It had surprised me. When landon ran out of the bedroom to see what was wrong, he found me crying in the kitchen. We left the cabinets open all day that day to see if they would leave (it appears that they are really smart - when they see us, they run for cover, and they prefer dark places). Well, i have never found more than 3 together ever again. but i did see two yesterday. These guys are tricky. We put murder-feast in our cabinets for them to feast upon, but it is untouched. We never find them on any of our food, only just lingering around beneath our bowls and plates and within our pantry items. I have no idea what to do with them. They freak me out.

Sunday when i mowed the lawn, i came across multiple ant colonies in our lawn. One of them is the HUGEST ant colony i have ever seen! (outside of termite mounds in sub-saharan africa). We have a few smaller patches also and they are spread in every area of our lawn. I tried to mow those suckers down and out! but of course, that was futile. I thought i had an ingenius idea! I was remember elementary school science projects and decided that covering their home with baking soda and then saturating it with vinegar might do the trick. that was fun to do and actually kept the ants from resurfacing for 2 days. but yesterday i saw them rebuilding...

I've looked into some solutions. It's a little tricky to find something that will drive out ants, and keep them out that is affordable and not toxic enough to put in our cabinets, or something that Duvick won't be poisoned by. So far, i haven't found anything besides these (USELESS) little murder-feasts (that is not what they're called - i forget their names, but this seems fitting of their purpose, whether they accomplish it or not). i am SO VERY open for suggestions!

Coming from Colorado, where if we have ants, we call the exterminator! (and we don't really get ants), i've been pretty bothered by this. Landon told me (as a Georgia boy) that summer weather brings ants and you can keep them at a minimum, but you just can't get rid of them.

"grab your fly-swatter and smack away at my head..."

hey y'all, thanks for your sweet comments on my last post. so grateful for you - my friends!

I'm listening to my "Celtic" play list right now. i listen to Celtic music often while i work. and i have my ginger candle burning - it creates a great atmosphere for some serious work to be done. well, besides the window AC unit just 3.5 feet to my left blowing numbingly cold on my left shoulder and cheek. well, it is evening and our afternoon sun sent the temperatures in my house soaring!

well guys, we still have bug issues - though these are more of a flying variety. i try to think back on our time in Africa in order to keep my sanity about these things. i have just gone weak and wussy this past year i guess.

Here is a quote from our blog in africa:

When it rains, we get these terrible, monstrous flying termites that fly around the lights. They are so stupid, after about 15 minutes of colliding into everything (Landon thinks they might be blind), their wings fall off and then they crawl around on the ground. They're not little white ants, like the other termites we have, they're really big and brown. I think they are the most disgusting bugs we have here. They come out of nowhere when it rains, in multitudes! Truly. People here eat them. Once their wings fall off, they fry them up - i hear it is much like popcorn. Last night, Landon asked me to make him some....oh. my. gosh. I am not cooking those bugs in my kitchen, even if it is culture. AH! nasty little terrors. That's how i feel about that.

okay, so now imagine a warmer and more humid climate... and a really old little house... and a wife going on nights in a row of 5 hours of sleep (see me!). the other day i was at my wit's end! okay - just to preface - i am not afraid of bugs - i'm not! welp, we're starting to get flying ants in our home. though the only place that i see them is in the SHOWER! eek! they are big and kind of long and just crawl around on the bathroom window and pretty much just on the floor of the shower, crawling on top of one another - they never actually fly. i have no idea where they come from. i've poured piping hot water down the shower drain and lots of chlorine beach! but still they are there every time i'm standing there naked ready to shower... they are there!


also. i know you know: mosquitoes. we have some pretty major issues with mosquitoes last fall after the flooding. we have had similar issues this year after the major flooding that has been in the mid-west. we even had the bug-truck drive through our village to spray for mosquitoes. that helped a bit. whenever i go outside in the evening, there is always a mosquito on duvi's sweet little brown face - usually between his eyes. he has no clue, but just runs to me shaking his tail and looking at me like, "momma, pet me! pet me!" and i get so mad when i look down and see a glutenous leach on his nose! when i smash it on duvi's face, duvi blood gives him a streak up his nose onto his fuzzy head. gross. they're worse on the trail where we go running. 2 weeks ago landon brought home 25% deet bug spray - we have just about used the whole can - but that stuff actually works!

when we lived in kenya, before we went to sleep we would walk though our room and shake out the clothes in our closet to send the mosquitoes flying so we could kill them - otherwise they would bother us all night and we'd wake with bites on our faces. here we do a similar thing. we rather enjoy swatting and smashing mosquitoes. though one of landon's pet peeves these days is when i smash a mosquito and leave the blood on the walls (not too unreasonable of him, i know). well, i'm really sensitive to mosquito spit and when they bite me i get these weltish bumps. hate those guys. actually the other evening (probably after days in a row of opening at 'bucks - i just remember i was exhausted), i couldn't get the mosquitoes from flying around my face and after shaking my head violently several times and swatting around my head for 5 minutes, i just looked at landon and started crying , "i think you're having an emotional breakdown" he said. he was probably right.

one bug that i REALLY like finding in our house is lightning bugs! i love it at night when they fly around in the room. they're bigger than mosquitoes or flying ants, but they are so magical and beautiful! and landon says that they eat mosquitoes. i'm contemplating herding them into the hall closet and letting them into the corridor of our house in the evening to protect us from mosquito-demons. yet, i've gotten really good at smashing mosquitoes with my hands.

The unfortunates

Everywhere we've lived, I've shared with you the little quirky things about living in our actual house. You know that in Kenya we had safari ants, huge slugs, bats in the chimney, concrete floors, and vampire mosquitos that only came out at night. And you know that in Illinois we had big juicy ants in our kitchen cupboards, a full size window in our miniature shower, and tornado warnings every now and then. So I thought i should share a bit about our quirky Utah home.

But first - you know I love it here, right? I do.

Okay, now that that's settled....When we were in Illinois, we noticed these little moths in our home in the dead of winter. I thought it strange to see bugs in the winter time, but i actually realized that bugs come IN in the winter time because it's too cold outside. So these moths were just one of a handful of different kinds of bugs that made their home in our house. They were a neusance, but we never did anything about them, aside from smashing them on the walls.

(photo by David A)

Within the first week of living here, we have seen the very SAME moths. After some online research, Landon discovered that they are called Indian Meal Moths. After reading about these moths, we discovered that it's not the moths themselves that are the pesky part - each moth lives only about a week and during that time, can lay from 50 -500 eggs. And they only lay their eggs beside a food source for their little babies (we definitely moved them here and they multiplied during the 3 months in storage). Gross. So we read about how to get rid of them: we actually threw away ALL the foods that we brought from Illinois (corn meal, grits, spices, pastas, oatmeal, etc...) and in doing so, we actually found many of their little worms. gross. Then i cleaned out the drawers and cabinets with bleach. That was 2 weeks ago. Since then, we have probably killed over 10 more moths (which is much less, but still FRUSTRATING!). The little wormies can chew through paper and plastic, so simply closing boxes, or even taping them shut, does nothing. The only other thing we can do is purge EVERYTHING, bleach every surface of every cabinet, and from now on use tupperware for every. single. thing. argh. Maybe if we were nicer to Illinois, Illinois wouldn't be plaguing us still.

Since we've moved here, I keep hearing noises in my house. Every once in awhile, I have heard a ringing coming from my family room. I walk in there, putting my ear to everything....and finally discovered what it is! And while I'm working alone at home, sometimes I think i hear someone in my house. You know, when it sounds like steps are being taken - like there is actually movement? So i grab my scissors and search for any perpetrators. But there never are any (sometimes this happens more than once a day). The other night while i was asleep, Landon felt the bed vibrating. He thought that it could have been an earthquake (that is rumored to be the most likely natural disaster around here), and then realized that in fact, it was something else....

(photo by Ryan Greenberg)

The ringing in our living room is the wine glasses on the shelves "dinging" against each other ever so lightly but constantly making a ringing come from the shelves. The train tracks are actually SO close to our house that it MOVES the house. The movement we've been feeling and hearing "every so often" we have realized, coincides with the roaring train in our front yard. ha!

(photo by clockmaker)

The last quirky thing: our water. I'm not sure if it's because the ground here is rich with minerals (SALT, for instance, duh), or what, but my neighbors warned me of the "hard water" here. Having never lived in a place with hard water, I thanked them for their warning, and went on about my merry way. We've been here for just a bit over a month now, and I definitely know what they mean. There is a white film on everything that water touches: my amazing showerhead and curtain, and faucet, etc..., Duvick's water bowl, the sink, etc... So we bought a brita water filter for our faucet. So now the minerals are filtered out at least in the water we drink. But we were noticing little floaties in our glasses of iced water and now finally realize that the white floaties come from the ICE. gross. how do you filter your ice machine? And there were two things in the house that we absolutely had to replace because the mineral deposits were so dense that they stopped working. I guess we can attach a water softener to our water tank or something like that. I'm being persuaded to do so more every day.