The first Monday that we were here I declared war. I had a fuzzy duster and I went from room to room getting all of the webs down and whacking the spiders. Seriously, I whacked them with the duster. Usually I make Chicks do all of the spider murdering, but this was war! I suppose, as general of the household, I could have sent Chicks into spider combat but I wanted to intimidate the spiders into surrender.
The next day I found three more sonny-long-legs. The day after that I realized that about 1/3 of the spider webs had returned. So I pulled out the vacuum and extensions and sucked up the spiders and their webs.
I spent about a month killing at least one spider every day. It was hardcore.
They did get some revenge. I woke up one night with something biting my back. I had the welts to prove it. And there are spiders outdoors that make those gorgeous webs you see in pictures. I walked right into one of those webs one day.
The spiders seem to have retreated. They've sent in the troops though, the ant troops. The land lady mentioned that 'when it gets cold, there might be a few ants in the kitchen.' Turns out that she means if it gets below 60 there will be ants everywhere.
It started out with ants outside. The ant line honestly went around half of the property, from the front corner to the back corner. I mentioned this to her, she didn't care and muttered something about ants being good.
As it became colder, there was an ant here or there. I didn't like it, but put out the ant traps she left for us. Then I sprayed the perimeter of the house with spray she left us. I mean, I saw how many ants there were trooping across the driveway to get to the compost pile out back and I didn't want them marching their way in here.
Those ants are resourceful little buggers. As the temperature drops and rain appears, they get inside everywhere. This weekend I found some on the changing table and then realized that an entire line marched along the wall of the kids room. I vacuumed them up and put a trap in there with the door closed. However, there isn't a good place to leave the trap where the kids won't get it.
The next morning we woke to ants streaming out of the utility closet across the dining room. You probably are thinking that they found crumbs, but I've swept (with images of those ants in mind) and we followed them, they weren't getting food. One line meandered into the kitchen but didn't find anything in there even.
Then I walked back into our room and saw the ants on the floor there, wondering where they came from. Well, obviously the ceiling is the perfect place for ants to come in. We actually stuck sticky tack in that hole which helped for a little while.
This morning the ants were tracking from the closet (right past two ant traps) to underneath the couch. Once again, no crumbs so we don't know what they found interesting.
I'm giving a conservative estimate to killing 800+ ants in the past three days.
Since we're renting, we are trying to get help but are hitting a wall. I don't think I can say much more than that right now. Hopefully we can take care of it because I don't like having to clean ants out of the crib before I lay Josie down for a nap.
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