Not Your Favorite Ant’s Tales
Today I’m killing ants.
I don’t want to because I’m not a fan of killing any creatures. I barely eat meat. Perhaps a handful of times a year and that’s only when it’s super special or there are no other options for me. I also think that if you are eating meat you should probably a) know where it’s coming from and b) be able to kill it yourself. But I have plenty of veggie options today and I’m not going to eat these ants, not even covered in chocolate. Actually, they don’t even seem to favor the chocolate that I leave out.
The problem is that since this house is a non-killing home we’ve left the ants alone, and have instead tried to keep our crumbs to a minimum. Despite our efforts, the number of ants keep growing. They are on the counters, on the living room floor, in the cabinets and for some reason on the toilet seat. This happened last year too. So I am going to use my DIY researched internet information and repeat the concoction.
It’s a mixture of boric acid, sugar, and honey. Only, we have run out of white sugar so I’m substituting brown sugar and the honey is low so I’m using agave syrup.
The ants could care less about my recipe alternatives and love the syrup mixture. Some have their last breaths floating in that sticky puddle. Do I feel bad? Yep. Sure do. Is it super interesting to watch them slurp up the sticky goo and take it back to the nest? You betcha. Are there less ants. Yes. It is a success? Well, they take this sweet deadly mixture back to the ant mound where it sadly ends the complex working system of the anthill, until next year when they find the cookie crumbs that I miss while cleaning the counter.
On the back patio of the apartment I grew up in, there was often a huge, I’m talking gigantic, fire ant hill. It took up a quarter of the backyard space and those FUCKERS bit. They left huge puss-filled, white-headed pox that itched and made young children cry. They really really itch. And you can pop those white bumps. It’s the worst when a whole colony runs up your feet and legs and they all decide to have dinner. That’s when you cry. And that’s when mom takes command. I don’t know how my mom knew the special trick. I’m assuming it was passed down to her from her mom because the internet did not exist back when this anthill did. It is the simplest and cheapest trick.
Here’s what Mary Jo did.
- Grab the large soup pot.
- Fill it up with water from the tap.
- Place it on an oven burner.
- Wait until the pot of water comes to a roaring boil.
- Remove pot with potholders (made on a loom by my sister and I, thank you very much)
- Pour that whole steaming pot of water onto the anthill.
- Wait for what happens next.
- Repeat if needed.
The ants, they did not like this hot boiling water finding it’s way into their canals and tunnels. Can you imagine what that water did? Well, it found the ants deep inside the mound and ended their tiny lives. And do you know what the remaining ants would do? It was actually very amazing. One by one they quickly removed the dead ants from inside the earth onto our back concrete patio. I remember watching in awe as the patio was covered with thousands of ants and many larvae bodies. How could there be so many ants under that anthill? How could they move so fast? And how many more were there? From then on I became a curious fan of ants, even though they bit me and made me cry.
Mom was our teacher growing up and science became my favorite subject (even though it wouldn’t be until my teen years that I formally learned details of evolution). In fact, I frequently caused myself trouble hiding in the bathroom late into the night reading ahead in the science books. For my sister and me, science was extremely biologically based. I remember learning to identify various types of clouds. I loved that studying flowers and plants meant that I could draw and label each botanical part in a diagram. This still makes me giddy. We went on adventurous field trips gathering leaf specimens to later explore and perform ink experiments on. We used mushrooms from the grocery store to create interesting spore prints. We learned by testing, while blindfolded and noses pinched, that raw apples and potatoes taste the same without the sense of smell. We placed caterpillars in jars with plants they were crawling on and watched until they turned into butterflies. Don’t worry, we set them free to fly and live out their lives.
And then there were the ants.
Who needs a fancy–plastic–cost money ant farm when you can use that same butterfly jar with gathered dirt and worker ants from the backyard anthill? Also, what do you feed them? You feed them pieces of saltine crackers and pinches of 100% whole wheat bread from the Minyards down the road. I’m telling you, it was amazing. Even with the lack of a queen, those worker ants began to dig tunnels through the dirt and maneuver crumbs into the tiny chamber rooms. My sister and I watched in amazement. It was like having a real-life diorama in your hands. I’m not sure how long we had the ant farm. I do know that at some point it began to smell bad as the food rotted. The tiny rooms became dens of white and light blue webs that clung to the side of the glass. The ants became less interesting. My mom decided it was time to empty the ants and their temporary home back into the yard they came from.
Ant Facts:
- If you cut an ant into two with your nail –because you are mad that one bit you–the two halves will continue to run around separately.
- Ants do not like flour but they love sugar.
3. In Texas, there are fire ants as big as your thumbnails.
4. In Texas, all ants are fire ants (I’ve been told this is not true but in my experience, it definitely seems like it).
5. Ants will crawl up anything and everything. Gravity does not apply to them.
6. Ants are amazing creatures and I love them.
