Ants, Ants, Ants!

Ants. Islands ants are not the same are regular ants. Island ants come in different forms. Some are translucent and others are much bigger than any ant should be. Then there are fire ants and those aren't really ants at all but the devil disguised as ants. Being bitten by a fire ant is worse than poison ivy. When I first moved to island I thought I had stepped into poison Ivy and it took me a few years to realize that what had actually happened was that I stepped into a fire ant mound and I was bitten several times, the effects of which I felt for about two weeks and it was extremely unpleasant. 

Today, we were dealing with non-biting ants but still a problem for sure. Usually when I see ants in the house, they are tiny and we have Terro liquid ant bait which I use to eradicate the problem within a few days. This has worked for the last ten years, until today. It has been extremely dry the last couple of months and I'm not sure if that's the reason why they have started appearing more and more, but there are a lot of ants. They prefer our dog's premium dog food as their target of choice but then they also spread out into our sink and our kitchen table. 

After lifting up our dog's ant infiltrated food dispenser by the wrong part and having all her food go all over the place for the third time too many, we realized we had more ants than is an acceptable amount inside our island home. I asked my husband to take care of the problem as soon as he came home. And he did, because that's the only way living on an island with island problems like these works. 

He was great and vacuumed absolutely everything first (if medals were given out for vacuuming, he'd get the Olympic gold). Then we took out the peppermint oil that we had gotten a few years ago to counter the fire ants in our back yard and our front porch, and sprayed every spot of ingress around the outside of our house and even some spots inside the house. Since peppermint is natural, our dog may lick it but it won't hurt her which is why we got the oil in the first place since poison is not an option with pets that lick absolutely everything.

As I write this, I have not seen an ant in hours and hopefully they stay away for good this time. Also, my husband is available for ant eradication consults. The dog is already writing letters to ASPCA because her food dispenser is in the sink and her food is on the other side of room now and not on the carpet in front of the television where she prefers.