Boraxed Ants

It’s a daily occurrence to encounter the kitchen counter at 6 am with shame. And a little resentment. Is this the squalor my life has come to? Dirty dishes soaking in the sink, empty glasses on the counter, the dishwasher still not emptied from the night before. But now, of course, we have ants. Tiny little black ants all over my kitchen.

The kitchen was clean when I went to bed. I had wiped the counter, ran the dishwasher. With two nocturnal young adults and two teens on spring break, though, I never know what I’ll wake up to. I press the start on the coffee pot and see an ant move out of the way. On the coffee machine. What is going on here? I quickly stop the machine and remove the carafe. Little white dots are being hauled around behind it. They laid eggs overnight? So gross! I yank the whole machine forward and lift the lid, only to find a few ants had fallen into the full tank. On reflex, I dump out all the water, hanging the machine over the adjacent sink, spraying it out frantically. I leave it dangling over the sink as I dispose of the fresh grounds, thankful that I awoke before the timed coffee pot started brewing.

My husband walks by, getting ready to leave for work. He raises an eyebrow, and I try to explain.

“I had to dump everything out! There are ants in the pot! Ants!”

“Not everyone like ants in their coffee,” he states dryly and heads out the door. He doesn’t dare complain about not having coffee available today.

Figure it out, Anne.

I need to get rid of these ants immediately. I don’t want to have to drive to the store just to spend money on someone else’s solution. I don’t want to put chemicals on my counter. I don’t want to spray anything in case my cats and dog were to get poisoned by it.

So here's my plan:

I will find a natural way to purge my kitchen of these tiny black ants. Ants have been invading houses for centuries. It can’t be just from dirty dishes in the sink. So before I do anything, the shame has to go.

I remember the diatomaceous earth that I bought to repel the Asian beetles and box elder bugs. I haven’t tried it yet as I was waiting until fall to spread the fine dust along windowsills as instructed. I wasn’t even sure at the time if I was even going to use it. Honestly, I bought it because I like saying the word. I got immense pleasure showing the bag to the kids, saying the word smoothly as they looked at the letters and then at me as if I was insane.

I find the big bag, double checking it is completely safe for pets and people. I haven’t had my coffee yet, so in my before 7 am fog, I rip open the bag and start trying to sprinkle the powder along the counter edge. But it’s not sprinkling. It’s landing in big messy clumps with a mist of white dust pluming up and landing on everything. I step back and watch the ants walk right over it.

I decide to make instant coffee, step out of the kitchen, and do a little research online.

I must poison the queen.

I feel better when I learn that first sanitizing everything would have been a mistake, destroying their set path and merely delaying the treatment. It seems an insurmountable task, anyway, at this point. I see that the diatomaceous earth is preventive only, as it dries out their exoskeleton slowly, and is only good for those inquisitive first explorers. I delight at learning the word chitin. I never heard that word before, but I guess it’s what the exoskeleton is made of. I find a recipe for poisoning the queen using borox, sugar, and crackers. There is a tiny mention that they might be seeking protein, not sugar, and to try a 50/50 mix of peanut butter and borox if that’s the case. I will try both at the same time.

I realize once again that I have everything I need in the house already and give a quick thank you to God. I don’t need to purchase anything. I had bought a box of borox once on a whim, thinking I’d learn how to make my own laundry detergent. I jot “homemade detergent” onto a sticky note, knowing full well I’ll forget that project idea by afternoon. I mix the borax in two different piles, cut tiny doors on the bottom of left over seed starter domes, and tape them down, one sweet, one savory, on paper plates and place them around the kitchen.

Within minutes, the plate by the pet dishes is swarming with ants. Dutifully marching into the peanut butter and borox dome, grabbing minuscule amounts, and proudly returning them to their queen.

I try not to panic when I see the number of ants increase. I have to move all the plates to that area by nightfall, as no ants return to the plates on the counters. I see the tiny crack in the floorboard under the window where their parade starts and ends. They occasionally go to the sweet dome, but mostly to the protein. I wait. And wait.

I awake in the middle of the night to inspect the coffee machine. I see an ant on the base, so I removed the carafe and make sure the bottom is nice and dry and return to bed. Upon awaking, I find the whole counter and floor flooded with the entire pot of coffee. The timer had gone off, but the carafe is sitting beside it, not snapped into place. The piles of diatomaceous earth are still there, now a soppy dark clay-like substance caked against the edges of the counter and floorboard underneath the coffee pot.

I hesitantly tell my frustrations to some friends at lunchtime. To my relief, they do not judge my housekeeping standards nor the resultant ants that I now know are from the pet food scattered about the food dishes. Instead, my friends discuss how they heard people drink a little borax for health. Something about bone density or something. I know I visibly cringe. That doesn’t sound right at all. I think there is a skull and crossbones on my borax box? Not sure, but I don’t know anything about it. A little FOMO creeps in. Are my bones getting weak? Am I supposed to be strengthening them at my age? I decide to think about that another day when I have more time.

On the third day, a few stragglers come and go. And then, just like that, they are gone. With relief, I caulk the hole and scour the entire kitchen.

I take a moment to read Nehemiah 4:9:

And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night. (ESV)

It’s important to act, to set a guard. I need to just start somewhere to see what doesn't work, like the diatomaceous earth. But after the quick fix fails, I need to stop and research to get right to the queen. And with some things… I shouldn’t do anything at all. That’s where prayer and trust are important. I won’t be ingesting borax myself any time soon.