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So I'll start by saying that I am not the world's most fastidious housekeeper. You will at any given time find dirty laundry, used glasses and tufts of dog hair, not to mention numerous toys and shoes strewn about my house. I will say, however, that I am not a total slob. There are not piles of rotting food or garbage in view. I like to think that most people have houses in a similar condition to mine, it's just that they clean up when company is coming and we never seem to have company coming...
That said, I was a bit perturbed when I started to see the occasional ant. I figured that they were likely coming in through the patio door (we live in the country and it's always open) and I attempted to be a bit more on-the-ball with the cleaning of the house, especially the kitchen counters. Crumbs and tidbits can be very enticing.
That was going well, until Saturday morning when I took my 20-month daughter into her playroom for some quiet weekend-morning playtime. I spotted what looked like a pile of spilled rice. And a few ants. Then I looked closer. Ant eggs. Many, many ant eggs. I was mortified, disgusted, appalled. Grossed out in general. I cleaned up all that I could see and disposed of the mess in the nearby garbage. When I returned, there were more.
Where were all the Ants Coming From?
It turns out that for some reason the ants were coming out, one by one, out of the top of the window frame, and dropping eggs from a great height to the floor (raining down from the heavens as my husband put it). Where they were planning on moving them, and what else was in the wall that caused them to choose evacuation, I wish never to know. When I prompted my burly husband to remove the window trim to get to the root of the issue, he admitted that he was 'kinda scared to do so'. I was frightened enough of the situation to hide in bed most of the day. Trooper that he is, hubby pulled out the shop-vac and hammer and went to work.
I'd say that over the next three days we must have sucked up 100 ants and somewhere between 1,000-2,000 eggs. Yes, that's thousands. You can thank me for being too bothered to stop and take photos for y'all. I can't even think about what would have happened had we not found them. Visions of the wall bursting open and spilling a pile of wriggling crawling chaos haunts my dreams. Between the Shopvac action and last-resort ant-demise-juice and I have only seen the odd errant ant for a couple of days now.
Who is going to empty the shop-vac is still up for discussion.
Anyone else willing to share a tale of infestation? Or are you all too embarrassed? If Sarah can post photos of her toes and toilet...
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Wasn't that hilarious! Well, not the ant part.
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Besos, The Zoo
OH no!! I can't believe they were actually dropping their eggs from up high. So creepy :S At the beginning of summer, we have the odd ant try to make it's way in through our front door. But I have these ant drops that work awesome and try to put it around the door every summer. Ants are annoying and even with spotless houses, they will find a reason! Glad you guys found it before it got even worse! Yikes!
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