Thursday, May 8, 2008

You Pest!!!

My neighbors across the street are from Florida. They have lived other places, but they are the type who "winter" in their Florida home. I only have one home, and I choose to winter in it...well, here. My neighbors are very nice. Nice and clean. Mr. neighbor gave me an old bicycle that didn't sell at the city wide yard sale. Mrs. neighbor told me how to get rid of my ants. I have ants. I hate ants. These ants don't really harm anything, they just swarm over anything that could be, or looks like food. Cat food is the favorite food in the whole ant world, and I have cats that eat cat food.
She told me that the funny thing is in Florida...if you DON'T have the exterminator visit your home regularly people think your dirty. In Missouri...if you DO have the exterminator visit your home people think your dirty. I think that's funny too.
She told me to use "Torro" from W.M. it works by letting the poor little critters gobble up the yummy poison, and than take it home to share with the rest of the folks, and than they all die. I have to use it about every 3 weeks or so, but I don't mind. The rain drives them inside the house, and it's been raining quite a bit here. I came home from work to find my little arch enemies crawling all over the floor. I found the "stuff" and got busy. It works.
I don't like ants outside my home either, but I don't think I should kill them. If they come inside...it's lights out. Outside...I can deal with it. In Colorado we had ants that would bite and chase you all over the yard. In Florida, am told, they have FIRE ANTS that can KILL you. Yup! The ants in my territory are little "Sugar ants" or known by another name.."Piss ants", squish one and you'll know why..because they sure don't smell like sugar!! I use either name depending on how swarmed I am at the time.
I also don't like mice. I live next to a field, so I could easily have mice. Last year I had my bird feeders on my back deck and that was an invitation for the mice to crawl under my house, and chew into my air vent and chew into my bedroom. We (Hubby) fixed the entrance problem, moved the feeders, and tied traps to yarn and dropped them onto the vents. We caught 9 mice! I hate mice more than I hate ants.
So the moral of this story is that there is always something worse that could happen, and that not all cats are natural-born mouse killers. Although mine happen to be... they just aren't natural-born mouse eaters, and that's another story.







3 comments:

Momstheword said...

Remember when that pastor and his family moved here from the deep south(you know, M's folks). Mrs. C. hated mold/mildew and constantly cleaned her house to avoid it. I told her that we don't generally have problems with that in our dry climate. I wonder if she had to retrain herself when she moved to Carolina?

Robin said...

Ants are a pain in the neck.

Kay Day said...

We have a bug person come. I don't know if that means we are dirty or clean. But it means we don't have to worry about mice. And ants. And spiders. And snakes. And yellow jackets and wasps. Plus, we like him. He's very nice, but a giant of sorts.