Well, the ants are back. In the house, that is. Jodi discovered them sneaking in through a crack in the foundation, using a gap in the bathroom baseboard as an entrance. I sealed the crack as best I could, but it was clear that we needed to draw them elsewhere. We decided it was time to make another great batch of “ant candy”: 2 cups of water, 6 tablespoons of suger, and 1 tablespoon of boric acid. The sugar draws them, the boric acid gives them a delightful tummy ache. Individually, the ants survive the experience (mostly) – but collectively fed to the offspring-producing queen, the nest begins to suffer. It’s evolution in action – well, at least, the natural selection part of it.<\/p>\n
\nI got fancy this time. In the past, I’ve poured the syrup into jars. But ants tended to drown in it while feeding, which seemed inefficient. The last time I made it, I stuffed toilet paper into the jars to soak up the syrup. This largely worked, but made a soggy mess that grew mold quickly. This time, I’m trying a hybrid solution: diced kitchen sponge, loosely packed into the jar to leave gaps. The sponges are then doused in the syrup, soaking it up to make a nice feeding surface. We’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n
\nI found lots more useful ant-fighting tips on the web:<\/p>\n
* http:\/\/www.homeandgardensite.com\/combating_pests.htm<\/p>\n
* http:\/\/eartheasy.com\/live_natpest_control.htm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, the ants are back. In the house, that is. Jodi discovered them sneaking in through a crack in the foundation, using a gap in the bathroom baseboard as an entrance. I sealed the crack as best I could, but it was clear that we needed to draw them elsewhere. We decided it was time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-life","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}