Battle of the Hormigas

For about a week now, I have been having a serious battle with ants also known as hormigas in spanish.  These pesky little buggers freak me out.  I mean when the human to ant ratio is one million ants per every one human, I think I have a pretty good excuse as to why I don't like them.  Also they do this thing where they create super colonies and live all over the world (with the exception of Antarctica--- which is kind of ironic considering it's called ANTarctica.)  Anyway, plain and simple, I don't like ants.  Within the last few years, we started getting them at my house in the U.S.  I tolerated them.  Then one year, my mom made me a funfetti cake for my birthday (aka last year... yes at 23 years old my mom still made me a birthday cake), and I came home one day to find our kitchen endowed with more ants than normal.  And then I noticed my poor, poor birthday cake... I won't even go into detail... it still pains me to this day...it didn't even have a chance.  That day kind of scarred me.  So when I moved to Spain, I thought I was free of my ant worries. WRONG.  THEY'RE IN SPAIN TOO.  AND IN MY APARTMENT. AHHHHHH.

I noticed them last week when a few popped up in my bathroom.  I wish I could tell you why they picked that room since that's one of the few rooms where I don't eat food.  I soon perfected the art of squashing about 10 ants every five seconds.  Once the 10 ants were squashed I was ant free until the next time I entered the bathroom.  After going away for the weekend, I returned to my bathroom to find more than 10 ants.  I quickly googled ways to kill them naturally and learned that they don't like lemon juice.  Conveniently, I live in Spain where you can easily go outside and pick a lemon off of a tree.  With my lemon cut in half, I squeezed and rubbed the lemon along the perimeter of my bathroom.  I also happily squeezed the juice on the ants that were crawling around.  And I am happy to report that I was down to about three to five ants now whenever I entered the bathroom.  Content with my results and the fact that lemon juice actually worked, I slept ant-worry free that night.

The next day, I woke up, fixed myself breakfast, and headed to our patio to eat outside in the beautiful weather.  About two hours later I returned to our kitchen to find ANTS.  Not just one or two...The stupid things left my bathroom to inhabit the kitchen!  Not in the proper apparel to go pick lemons, I headed back to google to read what else killed ants.  Conveniently I had a lot of cinnamon to use up before leaving in two and a half weeks and ants don't like cinnamon.  So I sprinkled cinnamon all around the perimeter of our kitchen and pantry.  Now mind you, our kitchen is big and oddly shaped since it is also attached to our pantry, another bathroom, and another patio.  And the ants were in all of these places.  So I couldn't sprinkle the cinnamon on the entire perimeter.  So I stuck with the locations where I saw the ants coming and going.  The cinnamon worked to an extent.  It stopped the ants from using their usual entrances, but they simply relocated to other entrances.  And when I sprinkled cinnamon on top of the ants (yes, this may sound evil, but I don't really care) I witnessed them crawling right through it to get away.  So really cinnamon was just a deterrent and if they wanted to, they could walk right through it without harm.  grrrr.  After giving the cinnamon effort a try, I stepped back and analyzed the situation...

1. The ants were only in the rooms with the white tiled floors.  They weren't in the rooms with the brown tile.  (And yes I got down on floor level and looked) Which means that they weren't in my room.  Thank goodness.

2. The ants weren't going for the sweets, but instead for the bread crumbs.  (Could they be any more Spanish??)

3. I had two kinds of ants.  They were two different sizes and seemed to be working together to drive me crazy.

4. They didn't climb walls, thank goodness.  Their annoyingness was limited to the floor only. 

5. ANTS SIESTA TOO.  I know this sounds insane.  But from 2:00-5:00 I had only one or two ants in my kitchen as opposed to the normal amount.

After about 24 hours of living with the ants, my frustration was building.  I decided to look at the situation from a different perspective.  Essentially the ants were cleaning my apartment by eating the leftover bread crumbs on our floor.  It was rather nice of them to take on the role of house cleaner for free.  So why not try to be accepting of my new house guests.  (I had also secretly hoped that when our house cleaner came the next day she would magically get rid of them all.)

But when I returned from school to our apartment after the house cleaner left, I was shocked to see even more ants than normal.  I had had enough. These stupid things were going to die and die now.  I found an ant spray labeled "pesticides" that I had been avoiding to use.  (Not a big supporter in the use of pesticides.) I sprayed the life (literally) out of those buggers.  And I also sprayed almost every corner of every room in the kitchen/pantry/bathroom section.  Sorry, not sorry.  And since then, knock on wood, not a single ant has showed up! 

So lesson of the day folks is that pesticides work.  I still won't use them unless it's a matter like today where I just had no other option.  Ants will forever suck.