Ant-mageddon

If an object A exerts a force on object B, then object B must exert a force of equal magnitude and opposite direction back on object A.

-- Newton's Third Law of Physics

If something happens, there is an unintended consequence.

-- Margo's corollary

Until we finally got some relief in the form of showers and some cooler air, it had been so very, very dry in August. What rain we got prompted the dogwood to put out some fresh leaves, but for the most part the tree is dry, brown and forlorn. What birds came into the yard - including, briefly, a hummingbird -- came to the water dish to drink before flying off to forage.

Then, with a turn of the calendar page, cooler air came with winds out of the north. Overnight, birds that were scrounging for whatever they could eat took off to the south and wetter, greener pastures. Fall migration has begun.

Meanwhile, our house got carpenter ants.

Carpenter ant (Pixabay)

According to the Orkin pest control people, there are 24 types of carpenter ants ranging in size between 6 millimeters and 20 mm. They are not like termites that eat wood and weaken structures. These ants are so named because after mating (and the male dies): 

"The queen typically seeks a small crack in a wooden structure. She then closes herself inside that chamber, and lays the first batch of eggs. She remains inside the chamber until her first batch of eggs becomes adult workers. During this time, the queen uses her stored fat reserves and wing muscles for nourishment.

"The queen provides food for the young by means of her salivary glands until they become workers capable of foraging. The queen looks after her first brood, and, once grown, that first brood of adult workers takes care of subsequent broods."

That includes tunneling out more wood to expand the colony. 

So when it got dry and the ground got hard somehow -- squeezing through a window screen? hitching a ride on my jacket? -- two queens got into the house, converged on the small bathroom off our bedroom and started creating colonies. 

I was slow to notice this. I would see one ant, grab it in a tissue and throw it out the bathroom window. If it was in the sink, I washed it down the drain. But then I saw a couple, got one and saw the other run behind the sink. Another time I turned on the water and two ants came out of the overflow hole.

(Muero/Wikimedia Commons)

I told my husband (MH). He went out and bought ant traps baited with poison. It didn't seem to slow them down. I told him I thought the ants were in the bathroom because they wanted liquid. He went back to the store and bought liquid-baited traps - sugar water with poison. The ants lap it up, take it back to the colony and regurgitate it to feed the queen and the young. When the queen and young die, the colony falls apart (the workers eventually die of the poison, too).

I base the rest of this tale on what MH told me because I refused to go into that bathroom until the colony was dead, and that took almost two weeks.

He put out the liquid bait and when he next checked he saw dozens of ants lapping it up ("like crack," he said) and following the scent trails of other workers back to their queen. I had thought there was only one colony, behind the sink. No. He said there were bigger carpenter ants climbing up the bathroom wall and going into a hole created when I put in a new towel rod in a slightly higher position. I hadn't plugged the old hole. Now there was a colony of who knew how many ants swarming behind the bathroom wall.

Dozens of ants.

MH, with his scientific bent, would check on the situation twice a day and report on what he thought was a fascinating situation. I made him keep the door closed and blocked the area at the bottom with a towel. Thankfully, he didn't film Ant-mageddon.

After about 10 days he said he thought things were done. Still, I was slow to return to using that bathroom. However, when I did finally go back and turned on the light I found a mess caused by sloppy, sugar-crazed ants that made things sticky everywhere. The next weekend I plugged up the hole and scrubbed both the wall and the floor (the traps were removed but put back after the floor dried). 

As invasions go, it could've been worse. It could've been hornets (we've had them nesting behind the bathroom window sill) or wasps (which have been found in the attic) or cockroaches (never, thankfully). We even once had a winter invasion of the smaller pavement ants. 

As long as houses are built in former forests or on former meadows and river valleys, there are going to be insect invasions. And as long as something -- global warming perhaps? -- creates heat and, in my area, drought, there will be creatures great and small doing what they must to survive, including coming into houses.

I am still finding carpenter ants, but they are in ones, not dozens. At least for now.