I have discovered this year that while living in a first-floor apartment means not having to lug my stuff up and down the stairs and getting a larger "backyard" area, it also means having Serious Bug Problems. Spiders, pill-bugs, crickets, you name it - the only insects I haven't had problems with are cockroaches. But worst of all are the ants. Late this winter I had tiny little sugar ants swarming my kitchen - I sprayed, bought traps, yelled at them, and tried reverse psychology, but nothing worked. Finally I called the landlords and they brought out the big guns, which seemed to finally take care of the ant problem, so I made the mistake of relaxing.
BUT NOW the ants have returned for revenge. Last night I was sitting at my computer desk in my bedroom when I noticed several ants crawling out from under my laptop. Which really freaked me out at first because I thought they'd gotten IN my laptop and were living there, but when I calmed down I noticed that there was a trail of ants climbing up my desk from over by the trash can...and that said trash can was positively crawling with ants. There was also a trail along the carpet from the wall to the trashcan - with ants crawling all over my stack of library books. It was like a horror movie, seriously. Turns out I probably shouldn't have thrown a soda can away in that trash can, because that seems to be what was attracting the ants.
So I emptied out the trash, stuck it in the bathtub and drowned the ants still inside, and went along the carpet with a wad of Kleenex smushing the rest of the invaders. Then I went and got my bug spray and sprayed all along the outside wall, and THEN I decided that I couldn't relax until I'd vacuumed every last inch of carpet in my bedroom. Oh, did I mention this was all happening around two a.m.? Ugh, ugh, ugh. I haven't seen any ants yet today, but I had horrible nightmares all last night in which there were ants in my bed crawling all over me. I hate ants.
Labels: whining
I shudder at the thought of cockroaches, though.
And then I thought of you.
Apparently there are cockroaches in the basement at East Hall, where I have my office. I haven't seen any, but I don't like thinking about it.
I always wash my soda cans, yogurt containers, soup cans, etc. before I throw them away (or put them in for recycling). No choice.
In my first house here, I literally packed the trash into a plastic bag and put it in the freezer everynight. I could take care of the ants during the day while I was around, but I didn't want them taking over in the dead of night.
Oh another trick I used to use when I baked--I set the table legs in bowls of water to keep the ants from crawling up and getting on my cooling cookies. (Apparently ants can't swim.)
They are a nuisance. You have my sympathies.