Ants in the house in January?? I didn’t think it was possible for ants to infest your house during the winter. The summer, of course; the autumn, sure, since they try to escape the cold, but inevitably they peter out and that’s it until spring. Not this year. As the weather grew colder, the ants continued to appear, not in hordes, but in ones and twos. Still, I started to think maybe they had set up an anthill in the walls somehow. It turns out, I wasn’t far wrong. I finally googled “why do I have ants in the winter?” and sure enough, these ants, probably called Sugar ants, or Odorous ants (charming) will come into the house if there’s enough there to attract them, and never hibernate or whatever they do outside during a normal winter.
I kept killing the ants, but their brothers were persistent, so after Christmas it was time to make the kitchen a less attractive place for these pests. I put down some *Insectigone and started cleaning the cupboards. I laid out all the food all over the kitchen in categories, since our chaotic storage system wasn’t serving us. I needed to know where to find the baking soda without looking in every corner of every cupboard.
It turns out we had baking soda, like, a lot of baking soda. Ditto baking powder, Worcestershire Sauce and HP sauce (three containers of each). Also, two boxes of Butter Chicken spice mix, and four boxes of Certo (pectin for making jam, but I never use pectin in my jam-making, so…?? Who can explain these things?). Also,ancient containers with my mother’s handwriting on them (she passed away 8 years ago) containing remnants of rice and falafel mix. When I showed Dave my finds, we were particularly puzzled by all the Worcestershire Sauce. As Dave said, nobody needs more than one bottle for their whole life time, and here we had three. I concluded we inherited my mother’s lifetime bottle to add to our own lifetime supply, and then bought another thinking we might be out. (You never know!)
I felt badly throwing all kinds of old, rancid flours, seeds, etc, into the compost but I especially felt badly that we’d let our kitchen get to this point. We have so much food we’ll never use, like that bag of organic chickpea flour…
This kind of abundance gives me pause. I think there’s a need in some of us to have a comforting number of foodstuffs in the cupboards. If there are empty shelves it creates uneasiness and gradually they get filled, if not deliberately, then destractedly. Theoretically, we shouldn’t have anything in the cupboards we aren’t likely to use, but in reality, the presence of all this extra stuff is a sweet buffer, maybe stemming from ancient times when we had to hunt/gather all our food and to have extra was a rare bonus. I’m aware that in having extra we’re in a privileged position, but maybe that makes it our duty to get over it and not waste food just because we can afford to, and to think carefully before buying ingredients to use for one specific recipe. Case in point, the two boxes of Butter Chicken spice. It was on special according to the ancient price tag. A 2-for-1 deal?? How much butter chicken did I think was in our future??
The ants are still popping up here and there, but at least we’re getting closer to eliminating the attractants and getting our kitchen in order. Maybe they’ll leave before the spring thaw wakes up the ants that are hibernating like they’re supposed to.
*(from Google: Insectigone, an Ant and Crawling Insect Killer is made from a unique formula containing amorphous diatomaceous earth, known as silicon dioxide. This odorless and non-staining powder can be used without fear of damage to pets, fish, birds or wildlife.)
I’m sharing a pathetic, sad song today, but Brel does a pretty nice job of it. He sweats a lot, so, perhaps better not to stare at the screen, just listen. 🙂 I won’t be playing this one for the ants.
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