3. GET RID OF ANTS

Detecting if you have ants

An ant is a relatively harmless pest. However, you will not have one ant; you will have thousands. Ants will eat (and contaminate) your food, get into your walls, and bite you (depending on the species). Besides that, they're annoying -- that's reason enough. The difficulty with ant control is that they're incredibly hard to get rid of because there are so many of them.

You can usually tell if you have ants if:

  • You see ants crawling all over your stuff. Fool.

  • OK, that was kind of smart-assed of us. Sorry. The important thing is to figure out if the source is inside or outside of your house. So when you see the ants, follow the trail and see where they go. You may actually find a nest in the grand tradition of those piles of sand near sidewalk cracks, but more likely you'll find one in the fundament of your house, maybe in a beam of rotting wood. Or, you might find a crack that leads outdoors, which means you don't have an infestation yet, but just a band of curious invaders psyched about your selection of Doritos flavors. If you find a nest in your house, you should destroy them where they lie. Sealing up cracks to invaders is a bit easier.

Getting rid of ants

  1. As always, take preventative action. Keep food sealed (especially sweet foods). Also, if you ever spill a liquid (such as juice or soda), clean it up right away. The sugar will attract ants like crazy.

  2. Treat the perimeter of your home with dust or a spray. This will keep ants from invading through any of those pesky cracks.

  3. Interior treatments work well inside the home, because they attack the ants in, on, and around sources of food. So boric acid products (effective on roaches) will kill ants too. The Pest Products People recommend that you use Delta Dust and Drione Dust, applied with a Crusader Duster. Just make sure that you place the dust directly in the path of the ants, as they won't be affected by it if they walk around it.

  4. Ant foggers are easy to use, though they might not reach some of the hidden nooks and crannies.

  5. If your ants have burrowed into wood or foam insulation of your home, you can spot treat with a product called Bora-Care. This should be used in conjunction with another method, such as fogging. Soak all wood surfaces to the point of wetness to destroy ant colonies inside structures and to keep them from invading other structures.

  6. Baits are highly recommended for getting rid of ants -- just place them along paths the ants use.

  7. For more information, check out Termite.com's ant tips.