Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Ants and Black Pepper

There are ants visiting my house.

Uhm, no. Not that kind. More like this:

Yeah. With big mandibles or whatever, that they bite me with. I remember this happening last year too. I got traps last year, and killed them. I felt kinda bad for the ants.

But in the end, I felt worse for me. this year, though, I am about to move from this house. I really don't want to waste money de-anting a place that is only mine for 4 more days. I also don't want to buy anything because I know it's gonna be one more thing I have to put in a box soon. So I am trying methods that involve items I already own.
Basically, that means the black pepper method. I don't own a whole lot. You sprinkle black pepper on their trail and it apparently makes them go away. The only black pepper I have was whole corns. So the ants got sprinkled with a hail of gourmet, freshly ground black pepper. At first they didn't seem to mind at all. They kept just marching along, doing whatever anty things they do (really, what do they do...? None of them were even carrying any food...).

I imagined them having tiny little sneezes from all the pepper, and that this is what would drive them away. I like to pretend I don't kill things.

I got pretty excited last night. The ants had disappeared from my chair and couch! I couldn't tell if there were any on the carpet, they kind of blend in. This morning, though, the ants were back on the chair and the couch. They had shifted their parade path to avoid the black pepper.

Really, the only thing the black pepper treatment did was make it so I can't tell which little black specks might bite me until they move.

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