The Rites of Spring: Indoor Ant Parades

The last quiet morning of Spring Break was interrupted by my son standing next to my bed, waiting for my eyes to open. Not quite asleep, not quite willing to be awake, I knew it wasn’t an emergency because Jordan didn’t storm the bed like a soldier at Normandy Beach.

Still waiting patiently, Jamie leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. When I begrudgingly opened my eyes, Jamie smiled and said, “Oh great. You’re awake. There are ants all over the desk in my room. I mean, they are EVERYWHERE. Sorry, Mom.”

So much for sleeping a bit later. As I walked past the hallway mirror I noticed I forgot to take out my ponytail the night before, and it had slid so far to the right side of my head it looked like the handle on a bowling ball bag. This is going to be one sexy day.

Jamie did not overstate the facts – tiny brown ants were everywhere on his computer desk. Ah, the mark of Spring in the Dralle house. Our home, built on an enormous anthill, has an annual parade of visitors on the first warm day of the season, usually after a sizable rain storm. However, an extended parade route to the second floor of the house seemed unusual.

Until, of course, I started to strip the desktop of its contents: As Jordan and Jamie’s computer is temporarily housed in Jamie’s room, a million or so children had traipsed through that area over the last week, playing games and checking Facebook and emails. While candy wrappers and chip bags did make it into the garbage can, tantalizing crumbs remained on flat surfaces everywhere.

Ants are fascinatingly brilliant creatures outside my home, structuring colonies with groups of workers, builders, soldiers, drones and queens, and have colonized almost every land mass on planet Earth. They solve complex problems through highly developed systems of communication and forage for food and construct colonies through a division of labor. I remember watching a Discovery Channel special about one species of ants that was so ferociously territorial that it attacked the camera lens of the documentary team trying to film daily life at the anthill.

Inside my home, they are common pests to be squished and eliminated. Armed with the soapy bleach water bucket, I washed down all surfaces in Jamie’s room and vacuumed, vacuumed and vacuumed some more. Once complete, I sprayed the room down with an eco-friendly human and pet safe ant spray, loaded with pungent ingredients like vanillin and wintergreen, cinnamon, and rosemary oils. 

Within twenty minutes, while the parade was seemingly over, Jamie’s room smelled like a cinnamon/black licorice bomb had exploded. I didn’t believe it would make Jamie high, but it might make him hungry.

As a precaution, I spent the afternoon scrubbing, vacuuming and cinnamon bombing the kitchen and adjoining family room. Spring and summer house rules were now officially in effect: No eating except in the kitchen, rinse the recycling carefully and all crumbs go into the garbage can or washed down the sink. As our white ceramic tile kitchen floor will highlight any future parade routes, ant traps were strategically placed in corners and taped in place, preventing Sparky the wonder cat from smacking them around like hockey pucks.

Sunday evening’s torrential downpour should have triggered a mass exodus from the outside anthills to our back kitchen door, but surprisingly so far not a single critter has been seen.

Feeling victorious, I vacuumed the parade-staging areas this morning and dropped additional cinnamon/black licorice carpet bombs. I may have won the battle, but not the war. Soon my spring landscaping efforts will disrupt the various ant condominium complexes around the house, and they will revolt by marching up the side of the house and through the window screens.

But I will remain steadfast, armed with my soapy bucket and new little friend in a can. Until then, a very full and disorganized garage is calling my name. Ah, the rites of spring.