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[chaoticag]

Because of an accident I had months ago, involving gravity, soda and a severe defeciency in common sense as well as dark corners, my desk is now infested with ants. They suddenly popped up today, and I want to get rid of them, preferebly without using poison and fire (hey, this is my desk, the place where I spend most of my day).

Would getting rid of the source of sugar stop them from bothering me?

[redacted123]

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[Aqizzar]

Oh God ants.  Now, I'm not familiar with the ants in your part of the world, but I know everything there is to know about those little brown sugar ants.  And if they're anything similar, my prognosis isn't good.

Put straight, if the ants are far enough into your house that they're eating off your desk, you've already lost.  Getting rid of anything to eat (and trust me they'll eat almost anything) on your desk will make they sparse yes, but you really can't starve them, and you'll probably keep seeing scouts forever now.  They don't make one nest, they infest any place in the house they happen to plop down, and short of a housewide fumigation and poisoning the yardline, they will never be gone.

[chaoticag]

Thankfully this is a metal desk... and ants here are probably not as hardcore as Texan ants, nor do they eat everything, but they drill through concrete and marble. (Heck, I was once saved from undue suffereing because of them. Stupid scorpions and their habit of stuffing themselves among toys.)

Still though, they can get pretty annoying pretty fast... I need to figure out where they come from...

(incidentally, what would happen if I bleached that? Do ants avoid bleached areas, or does bleaching only get rid of the sugar traces?)

[Cthulhu]

My old house had a black garden ant infestation.  Nothing like taking a drink of ants, lightly marinated in a small amount of Coca Cola.

And yes, if they're in your house, it's too late to stop them.  Don't put food or drink down anymore.  Carry it with you.

[Cheddarius]

If you fill a spray bottle with dish soap and water (go very heavy on the dish soap, but not so much that it stops being liquid), it will kill them almost instantly (at least the ants in my house). Works pretty well for other things too, flies and such. I don't know about getting rid of them permanently though.

[Aqizzar]

Never tried bleach.  It'll get rid of the sugar traces, but it won't keep them from coming back, not permanently.

But I'm not talking about them eating wood or anything.  They didn't drill through concrete, they found gaps in it, and they're probably building nests in every hidden cranny of your walls.  Where they're coming from can be loosely called "everywhere", namely the ground outside your house.  And if they make it inside once, they never leave.

[Cthulhu]

There are bait traps that the ants will eat from and then bring back to the nest to share with the queen, but they never worked for us.  There must be millions of them under, around, and in my old house.  Turn over any rock or large piece of wood on our property and you'll find thousands.

Oh, this is bringing back horrible memories.  I used to take the spray-nozzle on my sink and kill dozens of them at a time.  I had a nightmare once that I opened the oven and it was full of them all the way to the top.

[chaoticag]

I don't think they sell bait traps here... and I'm afraid the cat might try to eat them.

And if they make it inside once, they never leave.

Aw fuck... and to think we could have been out of this house a year ago.

They probably came from the front yard, since this seems to be the only block in the area with yards. At least this beats the bee mating season, since this doesn't lock me out of anywhere.

[Aqizzar]

You don't have to worry about your cat.  Ant traps (the only ones I've ever seen) are like little plastic cans full of poisoned ant food.  You tuck them in corners where they're likely to be, and let them kill themselves slowly.

At least, that's how it's supposed to work.  I never had any luck with store-bought traps or poisons of any kind, but at my house that was like fixing a dam with scotch-tape.  Being in a stone house, you might have time.

[Boksi]

This kind of things is one of the reasons I like my home country. We're like a reverse-Australia in this aspect; the most poisonous things around here are nettles.

Geography is plenty hostile though, but that's another thing entirely.

[Cheddarius]

Flood your house with magma

ALL BURN

[Cthulhu]

This kind of things is one of the reasons I like my home country. We're like a reverse-Australia in this aspect; the most poisonous things around here are nettles.

Geography is plenty hostile though, but that's another thing entirely.

It's not like the ants are poisonous or anything (They are, but it just feels like a bee sting and doesn't swell or anything), it's just that they're everywhere and eat everything.

[JoshuaFH]

Do the ants attack other insects? It'd be nice to have an infestation of ants that prevented an Arachnophobia-type scenario, which is something I fear will happen to me someday.

Try using pens. Draw a line and watch them follow it.

It won't get rid of them, but it might be fun.

[Cthulhu]

They do not.

The line thing would work better with sugar or pop.  They love pop so much they climb into it and drown.