And Still They Come

 They are ants. I feel as if I'm living in a version of Groundhog Day where instead of reforming myself I just have yet another invasion of ants. I'm not alone in this battle  which isn't actually any consolation.

We've always had ants  doing anty things in the garden - like undermining the pavers and putting up neat little piles of sand everywhere and anywhere. Annoying - and the under paving excavations are starting to be quite a lot more than annoying but that's another story. These ants were coastal brown ants and have been around in some form or another for as long as anyone has built houses on the Swan coastal plain. They are as I said generally only annoying but in the past couple of years things have changed.

There are some new ants on the block. These are tiny - and I mean really tiny. Generally I can't even see them unless they move. Even Pisces who eyesight is much better than mine struggles at times. These little blighters - and I'm trying to be polite here - are like the invaders in the song, Close the Doors I posted about a few days ago. Now I think about it the ant apocalypse may be what has set off my obsession with such songs. 

But enough of that and on to my battle with these little pests which currently they seem to be winning. Every day I get up to a trail of ants coming in from somewhere new. My kitchen is wiped over diligently after any use, everything edible is kept in sealed containers and the bin is emptied at least daily. It does no good whatever. I've tried every natural way of detering them and none of them work. They just keep coming. I don't want to use insecticide in the kitchen near foodstuffs  - although Pisces did give in and spray where the bin is kept the other day and I don't blame him.

Because they are so tiny their ability to enter the kitchen has opened up a whole new lot of problems. They'vecome in behind the glass splash back  and no sooner did I block the first hole than they were coming in through another. Whether the silicone seal on it was not done well enough or as I suspect they've chewed through it who knows. They've come in inside the cupboards which are supposedly sealed, they wended their way along the edge of the tiles , down beside the oven and then around to the sink. 

Today though they really excelled. My lovely cleaner J. was in the kitchen when she saw them and yelled "There's hundreds of them" which might be a slight exaggeration but there certainly a lot - all over the cook top and coming out from under it. The cook top has been kept wiped over scrupulously - it actually shines - and I've even scraped  under the edges to take away anything that could attract them. So how did they get there? Why were they there? Was it some sort of ant conference where they were making plans on where to go next? Who knows. J. entertained herself by going back multiple times and killing as many as she could and I turned on the burners for ten minutes in hopes of driving them out. We shall just have to wait and see I guess.

So if I come up with more songs about "things" invading people's live you'll know why.