![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Every now and then we have ants. Common variety tiny black ants. Last spring they briefly decided that our pantry was the happenin' place to be; they appear to have gained access through the kitchen window (our house is 80+ years old, and some of the windows are the originals, and come complete with rattles and tiny holes that apparently look like superhighways...if you're an ant, anyway). With the placement of a few of those devices whereby the ants not only poison themselves, but bring goodies home to the wife and kids, the problem stopped.
But Sunday night we discovered ants in the front bathroom. Again, they appear to have gotten in at the top of the window frame (the window is itself a good ten feet above ground level). This time they zeroed in on the cough medicine in the medicine cabinet, taking time first to check out the gobs of half-used toothpaste that Younger Girl had cleverly left lying about in the sink. This did provide a useful object lesson for the kid (She: "Eeeeeew!" Me: "This is why I ask you to make sure you've rinsed out the sink." She: "I get it. Eeeeeeew!"). I washed off all the cough and allergy medications and their measuring cups, depriving the critters of their goal. Once again the ant traps have been deployed, and the swarms of dedicated workers have slowed to a sluggish trickle. I expect to be ant-free within the next day or so.
But why did they come in the first place? The ant cranium is not huge; is there enough room in there to contain (and articulate) the thought that if they only climbed twenty feet straight up (that window is set about twelve feet above ground level, and they came in at the highest point) they would then find Benadryl and Robitussin beyond their wildest dreams? I mean, coming in to the kitchen makes sense to me because there's food (is there room in the cranium of an ant for the knowledge that kitchen=dinner?), but coming in in the bathroom--a room into which they have never before, to my knowledge, intruded--is a harder sell. The nice lady at the hardware store suggested that maybe the rain had driving them upward into the house. Well, I've got ant traps to spare, and fearsome doom awaits any critter who dares trespass on my Robitussin. You've been warned! (Do ants read blogs?)
But Sunday night we discovered ants in the front bathroom. Again, they appear to have gotten in at the top of the window frame (the window is itself a good ten feet above ground level). This time they zeroed in on the cough medicine in the medicine cabinet, taking time first to check out the gobs of half-used toothpaste that Younger Girl had cleverly left lying about in the sink. This did provide a useful object lesson for the kid (She: "Eeeeeew!" Me: "This is why I ask you to make sure you've rinsed out the sink." She: "I get it. Eeeeeeew!"). I washed off all the cough and allergy medications and their measuring cups, depriving the critters of their goal. Once again the ant traps have been deployed, and the swarms of dedicated workers have slowed to a sluggish trickle. I expect to be ant-free within the next day or so.
But why did they come in the first place? The ant cranium is not huge; is there enough room in there to contain (and articulate) the thought that if they only climbed twenty feet straight up (that window is set about twelve feet above ground level, and they came in at the highest point) they would then find Benadryl and Robitussin beyond their wildest dreams? I mean, coming in to the kitchen makes sense to me because there's food (is there room in the cranium of an ant for the knowledge that kitchen=dinner?), but coming in in the bathroom--a room into which they have never before, to my knowledge, intruded--is a harder sell. The nice lady at the hardware store suggested that maybe the rain had driving them upward into the house. Well, I've got ant traps to spare, and fearsome doom awaits any critter who dares trespass on my Robitussin. You've been warned! (Do ants read blogs?)