This morning, I made myself a nice cup of steaming-hot coffee -- cream, sugar, one teaspoon of each -- stirred it and three ants floated to the top, all deader than a nail or a pop star past his prime. (Now that's good coffee!)
Checking, yes, the Sugar In The Raw, with its handy (but hardly hermetic) metal pour spout, was thoroughly infested with tiny ants.
The coffee area next to the stove is a new place for them to show up; in previous years, they have preferred the sink and microwave side of the long, narrow kitchen here at Roseholme Cottage. But I shouldn't have been surprised; after all, sugar, ants.
I have backup sugar, because of course I do; usually there's a box of sugar and a jar of coffee creamer warming up on the sidelines. It just so happens that I hadn't picked up the next box of sugar yet but I always have a box of 10X confectioner's sugar in the cupboard and usually one of brown sugar, too. That's just how it's done. (Thanks, Mom!) I went with the confectioner's for this morning.
Time to rig the kitchen for summer. It's a good excuse to go through it and straighten things up.
Ah yes, the spring sugar ant migration. We had the little buggers show up in the dining room this year. That's a new one.
ReplyDeleteA dose of Terro and problem solved - until the next batch.
I get ladybirds in my house the UK
ReplyDeleteIt seems like the tiny red beetles with polka dots would be a little less annoying than ants -- unless they're the ones that bite!
ReplyDeleteSigh... Yep, that time of the year. Grrrr....
ReplyDeleteYep. They're back.
ReplyDeleteWifmann has a love/hate relationship with the little critters: she hates them, but loves to pour the gas/oil mix for the chainsaw into their dens/ burros, tunnels and smiles while she emolates the entire colony.
She would have happily flown the lead B17 over Dresden if ithe city was an ant farm.
She likes to set them aflame just at sundown.
But, she as of yet, has not started painting herself blue and hanging out under the three hundred year-old oak in the front yard during the full moon playing Martina McBride's "Independence Day", so I am good.
I was traumatized by the 1954 movie "Them" and while I do not desire to see all of ant hood's kith and kin incinerated at sundown, I do not object to their demise.
This year I have convinced Wifmann to try boric acid poured into the holes.
I hope the simple demise of the ants will satisfy her urges, elst the blue paint will come out. The Pict runs strong with this one. Sometimes death is not enough.
Burros=burrows
ReplyDeleteI hate autocorrect.