Ah hA!

A little bit o' knowledge to share with my fellow ant fans: Darin came by and explained a few things about ant life to me. We are not the only folks in this area to have such a vibrant and healthy ant population. Apparently, this is especially common in rentals where people will use Raid or some other kill-on-contact spray to deal with ant problems. The ants, however, have some sort of brain (or maybe just self-preservation instincts), so when they are attacked with spray, they will bud, meaning the nest splits up into many new nests spread throughout the house. If this is repeated over several years, well, one can only imagine the lovely city of ants complete with suburbs that must develop.

The stuff that other guy came and put behind a few electrical outlets was probably a type of bait, but a rather strong one, since the ants would come out to eat it, die right where they were, and find other places to come in. So what Darin suggested to us was a non-repellant bait. This means the ants don't know it's there and it's very mild and target specific, so they walk over it, pick it up, bring it back to the little nest, share it with their ant friends, and slowly all DIE. BWAHAHAHAHA! He sprayed very thoroughly outside the house and inside. We had to move the furniture out from the wall and everything. He got windows, cracks, everywhere.

Two weeks should be the maximum amount of time the ants have left. If the problem is super bad, we may need another treatment. Darin did say that these sugar, or pharaoh, ants change their wants from time to time, sometimes they come after sugar, sometimes meat, sometimes nothing very apparent, so I was glad to know from a bug expert that these were not some hybrid super-ant that would continue to mutate into forms that would defy my best efforts to be rid of them. He also said that God knew what he was doing when he made the little guys small. He said they would take over the world if they were any bigger.

So, I feel very relieved being armed with some information and answers to my questions, and knowing that our house has been very thoroughly treated.