Ant Wars continue here on the farm. This is Year Three and maybe Year Four. This week the advance team of ants found my mild homemade lye soap bars. WHO KNEW?
If I had a picture of ants covering the bar of soap, tunneling through the processed lard, making the bar of soap look like swiss cheese, I would insert it here.
PICTURE GOES HERE
Sadly, I do not have the camera to take a picture at 3:17 a.m. this Saturday. Hubby has IT in an "Undisclosed Location". Don't ask why. It is one of those weird Hubby Things that does not surface until past Year Five of Marriage. We're speeding up on nine years of marriage, and I still have not figured out a deterrerent for his Hide the Technology Gadget behavior.
But back to the ants. The ants were all over two bars of lye soap, but they totally ignored the Lavendar and Oatmeal soap that sat within 1/2 inch of the lye soap. That tells me that the lavender smell puts them off. WHEN I master making my own homemade bar lye soap, I WILL include lavender in it.
These blankety-blank ants are relentless. For the last two years, they invaded in the bathroom upstairs and attacked my drying orange peel, so I started tearing up orange peel and putting it directly in big gallon jugs of vinegar. It gives the vinegar a lovely citrusy scent when I pour the vinegar over the ants to watch them die by the hundreds.
Tonight I had to use diluted pine sol poured over my bars of soap because that was the nearest to my compromised hiding place. I need to watch the movie Naked Jungle to see how Charlton Heston handled his ant problem.
You know, I cannot remember the ants attacking the homemade lye soap that I used upstairs. However, I blamed the dogs for several bars that just disappeared. Is it possible the ants absconded with a whole bar??
When I moved downstairs to the permanent master bedroom, those ants followed me! (Yes, I know. We've been like nomads moving from room to room to decide on the master bedroom...but this is it. This is The One!)
Back to the ants, it's not like we are leaving food out or anything. Well there was that one ham bone for the dogs, but we pickled that thing with vinegar attacks, letting legions of ants throw themselves into the fight only to be fried in vinegar. I must admit, that was rather satisfying to wipe out so many ants after all the recent ant bites I've received lately.
The speed with which these ants discover my new nightly "Undisclosed Location" for the lye soap is rather un-nerving. These may be Seal Team Six ants. I *thought* I saw a couple of them fast roping down a spider thread to escape the diluted Pine Sol death.
The reason I think these are special ants is because throughout the day I had about half a dozen ants that somehow caught a ride on my clothes and set about biting me. Thankfully these are not fire ants. I just hope they do not have any treaties with any fire ants. YIKES!
