They’re all over the goddamn place. I’d like to flatter myself by thinking that this is due to the collection of healthy fruits and vegetables that I keep near my desk, making it the workstation in the office that could most easily be confused for a picnic. In truth, it probably has more to do with the heaps of disordered crap and abundant coffee stains that adorn it (FACT: ants are apparently attracted to Charlottesville property tax forms for cars you no longer own).
Lee family wisdom holds that the proper way to deal with ants is to sprinkle boric acid all over the damn place. It’s apparently quite deadly to ants, but was invented long ago, well before anyone had come up with the idea that chemicals might be bad for humans. So it’s perfectly safe to liberally douse, say, newborn infants with it in order to afford some anti-ant protection.
Unfortunately boric acid — like laudanum, sulfuric acid and egg cremes — appears to be one of those awesome substances that drug stores used to sell back in the day, but have since ceased to carry in order to free up more shelf space for Swisher Sweets and NASCAR-themed bags of Cracker Jack. So I’m stuck with more contemporary ant remediation options, which suck pretty badly. In the past I’ve tried the little black plastic gadgets with gobs of poisoned peanut butter in them. They seem to work, but only after months of patient watchfulness — I think it amounts to ant asbestos, only manifesting its deadliness ant-years after the initial exposure, and well after they’ve already produced offspring. I suspect that it’s actually a breakdown in ant society caused by skyrocketing healthcare costs that makes the stuff work at all. Alternately, it may just be that winter rolls around and they decide that the whole exchange has been so embarrassing that they’d prefer to bother a more dignified target come springtime.
The situation is further compounded by our office’s general eco-friendliness. We do a bunch of work for a prominent purveyor of environmentally-focused household products. I have no idea what their anti-ant products are — tiny, alluring decoys shaped like lady ants and made out of hemp, perhaps? A book printed in soy ink on recycled paper entitled “Living with Ants”? — but I’m terrified that if I raise a stink I might be forced to use them.
It’s not so bad. They only bite a little.
http://www.terro.com/dev/products.php?product=liquid_ant_bait
this is all you need to know.
You can still buy boric acid if you look enough. I bought some about a year ago to fix a somewhat different problem.
I second the Terro. Those little plastic things do nothing. Terro seems to kill off the colony in 2-4 days.
Wipe your surfaces with white vinegar. When it dries the odor will be gone and so will the ants.
3rd for Terro– I think it is boric acid in sugar water.
The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments tells me that you can make boric acid from Borax, which you should definitely be able to find at the store.
Dissolve 6 g of Borax in 15 mL of boiling water, then add 4 mL of hydrochloric acid and stir. Once it cools, boric acid and sodium chloride will crystallize… pour the crystals into a coffee filter and run some cold water through it to dissolve the salt. The remaining crystals, once dry are boric acid.
Or, I could just bring you some in a couple weeks.
I reccommend using the Iraq theory of ant control: decide who in your office is responsible for collaborting with the ants, then coat his entire area with powdered sugar. Then give him all of your ant bat traps.
That way, you can fight them “over there” instead of “over here”.
Hmm. This borax solution sounds like fun (although I’ll probably just order some Terro today). Muriatic acid == HCl, right?
Yeah – the book doesn’t really specify how concentrated the acid should be, but I think you can find 30% or so at hardware stores under the name muriatic acid. That should do just fine.
Science!