Thinkcorps

Since we live near Forest Park here in Portland, we have a lot of ants (I think they’re water ants, but they could be sugar. I don’t really know the difference). Sometimes I think they’re more resident than we are. Now, Portland being what it is, there seems to be a dearth of your typical hyper-toxic pest sprays for sale, not that my girlfriend would really let me use that stuff anyway. Besides the fact that our main problem is around the kitchen counters—pretty much exactly where you don’t want to be spraying stuff.

I have tried just about every non-toxic solution offered, and most of them don’t really work all that well. The problem is that we have ants everywhere, so there’s really no telling where they’re going to show up next.

There are two strategies I found that do seem to work pretty well. First, a mixture of boric acid and sugar in water, poured on a cotton ball. I did this inside a small plastic cup (a spray can top where I cut down the edge to about a half inch) and placed it outside along an art path. It’s important to place it outside if you can, since it will attract a lot of ants. You don’t want to teach them to come inside. I covered this cup with an upside-down salsa container with areas cut from the lip to allow the ants in, but keep leaves and other stuff out.

The ants eat the poisoned sugar water and take it back to the nest, hopefully killing the queen. I don’t think I succeeded in killing the colony, but I sure slowed ‘em down for a while. I kept extra boric acid suare water in another container to refresh my little trap when it got dry.

The strategy I just put into place I think is going to work really well. I took a few tablespoons of petroleum jelly, scooped it into a ziploc bag, cut off the tiniest corner, and piped the jelly around the edges of my counter like icing. I piped along the inner underside of the counter and on the ege of the backsplash. I now have a thin almost invisible line of jelly around my entire counter. I also piped around the outlets, running my fingers around the edge to smooth out the jelly. The jelly is non-toxic and since it doesn’t dry out, the ants won’t cross the sticky stuff.

It’s only been a day, but I haven’t seen any ants on the counter, even though I’ve seen them wandering around underneath.