I Have an Ant Problem

I successfully conquered my cockroach problem last year but this year I have a less traumatic but nevertheless troubling problem with ants.

I have had ant infestations before. They come in like good little Amazon soldier-ettes... all lined up in a row. A few scouts and guards wander about, but for the most part, they stick to the traffic plan laid out by in an invisible trail paved with pheromones laid down by the first to discover the food source. I know about this because I wrote a paper on the little critters for a biology class at city college.

I call them Amazon soldier-ettes but not because there is any correlation between them and the online shopping website. No, they are Amazons from the true meaning of the word. It is an all-female civilization that marches across my kitchen counter. 

Every species I've seen pretty much goes along the same pattern. The queen sits taken care of hidden away in the bowels of the colony. She is tended to and nursed by a special order of girls. Her sole occupation isn't ruling as a queen, but she is thoroughly engaged in the biological function of propagating the species. She lays eggs, lots of eggs, thousands of them.

She doesn't have to bother herself with raising her family. In this sense she is very much like a queen in that she never has to lift a finger for any of them because she has a cadre of nurses, separate from the ones that tend to her, to do the task of daycare from the time they are laid to the time their genetic code dictates the kind of job title and rank they will hold in the colony.

Male ants are few. They are needed for fertilizing the eggs but that is all. Once done with that, they either escape on gossamer wings or are eaten. An ant colony is a thoroughly feminist culture, as are many insect societies

I could go into all the permutations that goes on outside of the ant hill (with soldiers, guards and traffic cops), but for the purpose of this blog, I want to alert people about the species of invaders that have been attacking my kitchen.

These are small… tinier than gnats, and of a different social order I've ever been witness to. Though they do have a pheromone trail I rarely see more than a couple ants making their way along it. Another peculiar thing is that they don’t act like ants when observed. Ants are supposed to be blind, but whether I turn on the lights in the middle of the night, or in daylight! they don’t just stick to their business like most ants do, they leave the trail and scurry away like cockroaches in all directions into hide outs. It is as if they know when I am seeing them and they scatter.

The only thing I can think of that would cause this phenomenon of disorientation are the electronic/sonic pest control doodahs I have plugged in everywhere. It would explain some of it, but if ants are getting as smart as cockroaches, we have a problem Houston.