Wow...Persistent

Seriously, pavement ants are persistent little bastards. I managed to kill off the colony that was trying to infiltrate the basement but they started moving in again along tbe crack between the driveway and the foundation wall.

More poison. Take that!

Then today I opened the garage to pull out the barbecue. Big Paul was over, so I decided to 'cue up a pork tenderloin with a homemade sauce (recipe to follow).

There, in the cracks of the concrete slab were those damned ants again! This was a new colony, as I had never seen them in there before.

Normally I would just let them be. But my research (I'm a serial researcher when it comes to these things) tells me that ants of this type can develop massive colony networked with multiple queens. Better, I think, to not let them get into that habit!

More poison!

Here's what went into my bbq sauce:

• Sugar (3 spoons)
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• Worcestershire sauce
• Dill
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Pepper
• Salt
• Ketchup
• Hoisin sauce

Sorry, no measurements. I just tasted as I went along and adjusted accordingly. Whip it up with a fork, brush it on your meat, and you're good to go.

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Argh! Ants in the basement!

As I posted, the basement reno is underway. Unfortunately, I have a bit of an ant problem.

Crap.

They don't appear to be pharoah ants, which is a good thing. But they are getting in, which is a bad thing.

The first bunch popped up about a month ago. Just a few little reddish guys in the living room. I eventually traced those to the outside, where they were under the threshold of the patio door. I thought that a bit weird, since there's nothing for them to dig in back there. I hit them with some Drax, and that seems to have done most of the job.

Then I spotted a few in the basement. Not a great sign. A quick outside inspection shows they've been digging along the space between the foundation and the driveway.

I was going to use this recipe for an easy poison using borax and sugar. But when the walls came down in the basement, I got a new surprise. Under one of the windows there's a nice big gap where they seem to be getting in from the outside. Argh!

So, it's off to HD to get some spray foam and fill that gap. Then I'm going to dust the whole perimeter, and end off with some tasty boric acid bait. Hopefully this will do the trick.

And if not...Orkin!


Update: I picked up some Ortho ant traps as well, just to see. Those use boric acid. Rather than the dust or powder, which is just an earth product that cuts their little bodies to shreds (but doesn't kill the queen), I got a dropper and a sprayer of poison. The dropper I'm using around known sites, while the sprayer is giving me coverage around the whole perimeter of the foundation. I did fill the gap under the window with some expanding foam, so that should do the trick there, at least to keep them out. The battle rages on!

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