23 August 2006

The Ants Come Marching Two by Two-hundred...

Each spring, we are visited by tiny ants in our kitchen. They come in somewhere behind the sink and are most frequently found on the counter beside the sink or in the dishwasher (how they get IN the dishwasher, I will never know...). We put down ant traps. We rinse dishes before stacking them in the dishwasher. We make sure all food is sealed away. Still, we have ants. Since it's the kitchen, we don't use ant spray but I have been known to zap them with Lysol now and again when I'm disinfecting the garbage container. Want to know what happens when you spray tiny kitchen ants with Lysol? They get wet. That's it. They continue on as they were, being ants, just wet and a little shiny for it. Recently, we've been using a line of bio-degradable, non-toxic cleaners around the house. I happened to be cleaning the counters one day and zapped a set of oncoming ants with the Method all-purpose spray I was holding. Want to know what happens when you zap tiny kitchen ants with bio-degradable, non-toxic, all-purpose cleaning spray? They drop dead. Instantly. The label says "not tested on animals," which leads me to believe the manufacturer might not know just how effective their all-purpose sprays (all three flavors) are at ant eradication. Think they'd want to know?

3 comments:

Lady Epiphany said...

And yet, you can spray it without rinsing on food prep areas. It's a floorwax! It's a dessert topping! It's both!

The Plaid Sheep said...

Sorry. Here it is again.

You can kill ants with a combination of vinegar and dishsoap-the soap makes it stick. So it makes sense the Method would do it. Lysol takes 10 minutes to work completely. Maybe that ant died later.

karen said...

I'm going to have to try the vinegar and dishsoap thing - it would save me from wanting stock in Method...

My mom offers, "for ants, and other buggers, don’t forget hairspray; freezes em in place instantly *makes a very nice instant taxidermy for crickets and spiders..."

Katie's ex-landlord thinks I should try watering the lawn, in case the ants are coming in to find water. I think it's probably best if her ex-landlord is not an exterminator but, in any case, have too much lawn to test the suggestion on a private well!

subscribe!

Add to Google Reader or Homepage Powered by FeedBurner Subscribe in Bloglines