I go downstairs to the kitchen this morning to let the dogs in and get some breakfast. To my great displeasure, I see a line of small black ants walking across a kitchen counter. Before killing them all and wiping them away, I traced them back to their source and tried to figure out what they were after.
As best I could figure, they were feeding off of two half-popped kernels of popcorn in the sink, and they were coming out of an electrical outlet on a nearby wall. But there were exploratory committees looking elsewhere for supplements to the popcorn.
The animals, needless to say, were useless to help with the ants.
I wiped down the counters and got rid of all the ants I could, and covered the edges of the outlet with dish soap. This should last several hours until the ant pheromones fade away and I can remove the cover plate on the outlet without unleashing a horde of the evil little beasties into my kitchen.
The good news — the liquid dish soap thing really works. It will stop an ant dead in its tracks and turn it around. I’ve prevented further ant entry into the kitchen for the time being. More good news — these ants hadn’t found something they really, really liked, meaning they hadn’t got into the flour or the sugar. The bad news — if they were coming from an interior wall outlet, it means their nest is probably under the house where I can’t get at it with poison, so that means they’ll be back.
Are they Odiferous Household Ants? Squish one and see if it gives off a strong chemical scent. We had an invasion last spring, and everyone thought I was just a crazy pregnant lady when I complained of the smell when I smushed them. Then I looked it up, and discovered they really do stink when crushed.