Ants! ARRRGH! We're used to the usual couple of dozen black ants

[Redstone]

at the beginning of the summer; we stomp flat the ones we can get to, and after about a week and a half they're gone.

But, TODAY, we came down this morning and found HUNDREDS of the little bastards in discontinuous parts of the house; for example the kitchen and my office, with none in the room between, and in the Laundry room upstairs and in our bedroom, but NOT in the room between.

Now, Mrs R keeps this house so clean that if I drop food on the kitchen floor it goes right back into the sandwich. It's that spiffy.

So the ants aren't finding any food, WHAT what the fuck are they DOING here?

I did notice that an inordinate amount (± 50 %) of them were just standing there like a
Rich Limpballs acolyte in front of a television, rather that scurrying as danger approached.

Or are they, maybe, on oxycontin?

Any help would be appreciated.

Redstone

[lizziegrace]

1. All the rain?

I seem to get the big black ants when it's extremely wet out or extremely dry. They're not in the food, just crawling around the house. They amuse the cats but drive me crazy.

[otherlander]

2. Hey, that's wierd...we're getting the same thing!

Our neighbors are replacing an old retaining wall, and the workers there disturbed an ant nest, and a chimpunk nest too, so we have ants steaming all over the place now, and chimpunks running around our porch. One of the chipmunks fell into an umbrella holder that was all full of rain, and I had to rescue it.

[kiraboo]

3. For some reason black ants show up here when it's humid

or rainy. We put those small ant traps throughout the house, one in each room at least. It gets rid of 99% of them very quickly, for which I'm grateful because I hate ants more than any other crawling creature on this earth.

[Roon]

4. Get a set of ant disks

they work wonderfully!! You put one down and you never have to worry about ants again.

[Guy Fawkes]

5. Put cinnamon in their path.

Get some cinnamon sticks and put them in the ant's path. They'll avoid them- or so I hear- and you can slowly back them up and get them out of the house.

[lildreamer316]

6. SAME here.

gonna try the cinnamon tip above; the traps aren't working.

[gollygee]

7. Are they big or little?

Big black ants are carpenter ants and are bad the way termites are bad. You might want to call an exterminator and find out just what kind of ants you have.

[Whoa_Nelly]

8. Little black ants (odoriferous ants) will take up residence in wall spaces

Do a Google search...there's tons of info out there.

I had these nuisance critters in my house in the dead of winter around Xmas this past year. All because there was one cookie in my bedroom. That's when I learned that there are thousands, if not more, of these creepies in my wall. x(