Ants!!

After a blazingly successful winter/spring anti-ant campaign - distinguished by a BRUTAL concentration on leaving no food out - the ants made an incursion last night.  I was on it.  I've learned that the point of ingress is critical as that is where the scouts come back to time and time again.  This time they found a crack around the kitchen window frame which I assaulted violently with cleaner and insect repellant.  Walking outside I actually found the trail of ants up an outside wall and into the crink.  Frankly, it looked a little lazy to me.  I'm circumspect with poison bug spray in the room I prepare food but outside?  I let the poison rip.  Looks all quiet on the western front this morning . . .  but I've got ant radar working overtime.

Thought it was important to keep everyone in the loop.

The SoCal ants are an unusual breed: they aren't big, fat, easily squashed ants that die with a satisfying pop and they aren't big, aggressive biting ants with claws and pincers.  They're little, tiny, hard to see, swarming ants.  I have a mottled brown and tan kitchen countertop that makes it hard to see the ants individually but when they're swarming you look down and it appears as if the whole surface is in motion, wiggling and dancing.  It's unsettling.  The popular narrative is that - because we get so little rain - they're looking for water.  I think this is bullshit.  They're never attacking water in a plant container outside.  I suppose they're searching for food but a better explanation is that they're assholes sent to earth to make a fussy guy like me pull out his hair.

We had another ant incursion last night. Weirdly enough, the ants were trying to infest the grounds container of our automatic espresso machine.  I did not see that one coming. I was all over them - I think they're gone again. But the fact they went for damp coffee grounds is somewhat disturbing.  If they're going to stoop to damp coffee grounds what's next?  There seems to be nothing off the table.

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed in the ants and I know I'm courting disaster saying this.  Kind of like mentioning that we haven't had an earthquake here in a while.  If I leave out a knife with jelly on it and the ants find that, and swarm, great, my bad, but damp coffee grounds?  Isn't that like dirt?  I throw the damp grounds in the garden all of the time.  Why don't they just go there?

Wanted you to know there was another probing attack last evening.  There was a sizable crowd milling around maybe a whiff of a spill on the countertop after having entered the house from somewhere behind the stove.  It looked pretty desultory.  I mean . . . if I leave some honey on a plate then bring it on.  But the shadow of an indeterminate spill?

This attack was repelled with Lysol.  I was out of the woods.

Then, this morning, a thick line of ants heading over the counter and into the sink where they were furiously assaulting a couple of scraps of potato that had gotten caught in the sink stopper.  This was bullshit.  This reeked of desperation.