Things ants can get into...

Everything in my kitchen! End of blog.

I could leave it there but you deserve to know the courageous battle we're fighting over here. You thought the rats were bad enough, but that one has been called in favour of the Thompsons. The battle of the ants however, continues. And it continues to be won by the ants. Mind you they have 8 budzillion players on their team and we have only us two. Strong, brave, intelligent but still only two. And the ants are vigilant and incessant, we have to go to work during the day and while we are gone, they strike. They seem to strike with complete randomness and I think it's one of their tactics to confuse us (it's working!) There will be a sealed container of cookies on the shelf for 2 weeks, and then all of a sudden one day, there will be thousands of ants swarming to it, like it just arrived or something! Sometimes when I'm testing out a new container to see if it will keep them out, I will have success for a few days, and then, just as I'm starting to relax...they strike! Nothing can keep them out!

They seem to especially like sweet things and meat. They do a great job on any dead bug carcass that happens to be laying around. I tested it the other day and left a huge dead spider on the floor. This spider was the size of a nickel. Well, within the day and that night they had reduced it to 8 lonely legs (not much meat on a spider leg apparently). How they find things I have no idea but find them they do. It's really quite neat to watch them going constantly back and forth from wherever it is they come from to the prize of the day. They move in an ant trail, both directions at once and they don't seem to suffer any kind of ant-trail rage. It's fascinating, in a kind of defeating "How can I ever win this battle against so many ants" kind of way.

So here is a list of things they have succeeded in getting into.

Any and all "airtight" containers except properly sealed Tupperware

Glass bottles of honey with metal screw-top lids

My homemade granola! (which they ignored for 3 days to lull me into complacency)


A sealed jar of peanut butter (not even opened for the first time)

A package of ichiban, also unopened


Un-beleivable! They are really, really small, but don't let that fool you, they are undoubtedly our toughest enemy to date.