Ants.....

The ants are marching one by one and marching right into my house. I have been dealing with a minor infestation of sugar ants for the past six weeks. They have contained themselves to my mud room and laundry room, having yet to discover the tasty treats that would await them on my kitchen floor, especially after any meal in which Mark and/or Katie have been partaking.

I have tried several methods to control the ants. First I used bug spray, the kind that is only supposed to be used outside....killed the ants, almost killed me. Second I got ant poison. The kind that they crawl into, remove and take back to the nest. Let me tell you these are SMART ants. The word on the street is out, stay away from the grey plastic thing, its no good. They are not the least bit interested in the ant poison. However should any small morsel of food finds its way into the mud room or laundry room, they are all OVER that.

On Saturday afternoon I noticed that the ants has become quite prolific. I scanned my floor, trying to determine what was attracting them, knowing that it was not ant bait, but I could not find any morsel of food that they might be going after. Lauren and Mark were becoming fascinated with the increasing number of ants, and Katie, well lets just say she is NOT a fan of ants. Mark wanted to step on all the ants, a game that clearly would have kept him occupied for hours, but would have made a mess for me. So I decided the best way to handle the current situation would be with my handy dandy Dyson vacuum, and its oh so powerful suction.....

I pulled the vacuum out of the closet....to discover it was covered in ants.... The cause of their attraction to the vacuum??? Cheetos. Earlier in the day Katie felt the need to do a grab, run and dump. What does that mean in English? She grabbed the half full bag of Cheetos, ran into the office and dumped the Cheetos on the office floor. The majority of the Cheeots were picked up by hand, but to remove the lovely layer of orange dust on my carpet, (the natural byproduct of a good Cheeto,) I had gotten my vacuum out, which resulted in the brush on my vacuum being tainted with the color, flavor and odor of Cheeto. A natural attraction for ants.

So I sucked up what ants I could, thinking I had got the majority of them and emptied the vacuum contents outside, but apparently my attempt at ant eradication was in vain, because a short time later ants littered the floor of my laundry room, on their way to the vacuum and a delicious meal of Cheetos. Might have to get out that outdoor ant spray......

On a side note, the two year old is deathly afraid of ants. Believing the laundry room was ant free she entered only to see ants on the floor, which resulted in screams of bloody murder and her body becoming frozen in place, and shaking....its going to be a LONG summer with the bugs that infest my yard......