Tuesday, May 24, 2016

The Queen Is Dead, Alas

     Bobbi (in a bad imitation of a lower-class British accent): "'Our Mam's bad sick. We keep giving her the good food you set out for us but she just gets worse and worse. I'm worried 'bout her'"

      Tam: "Stop anthropomorphizing the kitchen ants!"

      As of this morning, it looks like the poison ant baits have done the job.  I do feel a little guilty.

5 comments:

Educated Savage said...

You really should put a beverage warning on this:)

JayNola said...

That got an actual audible chortle. Thanks for that Ms. X.

stuart said...

If you were in Sheffield, England the correct phrase would be

Our mam's reet poorly. (reet pronounced as reight)

Will said...

Mostly all we have in the SF Bay Area is Argentinian Ants. They have multiple queens per nest, so very difficult to eliminate. You have to inundate them with huge amounts of poison to do the job. The last nest I dealt with turned up their noses at both poisons that Gel Force sells by mail. That's supposed to be professional grade stuff. So, the owner finally agreed to use my own method.

Put a slice of lunch meat, or some bacon strips, on a saucer. Coat the meat with Terro brand liquid poison (can't recall the actual poison ingredient). Park one of these next to every ant trail. Fairly soon, you should see a huge increase of traffic, as the nest will end up sending a high percentage of workers to acquire the food. In a few days, they should disappear completely.

The important point is to present a very large food source, to get as much back into the nest as quickly as possible. You only get one shot at killing the nest with any particular poison, because they will eventually figure out that it is a poison. At that point, they will quarantine any ant that brings it back.

Ken said...

Seeing as it's Indiana, how about something line, "Our Ma's powerful sick...." :-)