The Definite Article

I hate ants and kill them with extreme prejudice.

I understand that there are some of you out there who also hate ants.

Here are instructions on how to conduct an ant genocide.

First, cackle maniacally. I'm serious about this. Give it a shot.

Think about ants and then throw your head back and let the EVIL COME SCREAMING OUT OF YOU!!

Muahahahahaha! Muahahahaha!

Doesn't that feel good? It should come naturally. If it doesn't, go hire an exterminator who will rip you off for $500, spray deadly chemicals inside your home, tromp dirt all over your Persian rug and still leave a serious ant problem, because if the idea of wiping all ants from the face of God's earth doesn't fill your heart with a black glee, you're not cut out for this job, are you, ya sissy?

Okay, we're going to bend that pure black hatred into a tower of iron will, but first, you'll need to pick a few things up.

What you need:

• Plastic ketchup squeeze bottle (empty)
• Apple jelly
• Cheap, greasy salami. Cheese will also work.
• masking tape
• digital camera
• Ortho's Malathion AND Diazinon
• Boric Acid, in powder form
• patience
• traps of all kinds (more below)
• ant repellent, like Spectracide Bug Stop

I often get asked what kind of ant bait or traps I used. After all, my old flat was utterly overrun with ants and they were completely eradicated!!! Muhahahahaha!

Use several kinds. Frankly, the most effective were the Terro liquid ant baits, and I recommend that you read this:

http://www.pestproducts.com/antbaits.htm

You'll know you have an ant problem because you'll see them. The first one you see, even near your house, is a problem.

Understand this: ants are like The Terminator - they don't feel pain, they don't understand reason and they absolutely will not stop until they have taken over your house.

Prepare to do battle.

Most of what you have to do will come naturally to you if you roleplay yourself as Vlad the Impaler or some such thing. You're here for one purpose and one purpose only: deal death to the six-legged freaks that are ruining your life.

Put all other things from your mind.

We don't want the ants to get wise to our little plot and start using hard to find areas, so don't set up your ant baits right away.

No, no. First, plan.

Take photos of your house, all areas, during different times of the day.

Different ants follow different behaviour patterns, and just 'cause some Pharoah ants are wandering around in your kitchen at night doesn't mean that there aren't also, say, Argentine ants in your living room during the day when you're at work.

So record every ant sighting for about a week. Keep a log, take a picture - but do not disturb the ants and don't clean the floors or your furniture or walls.

What we're doing is causing an End Population Event - essentially a regional extinction, truly genocidal, so we it's important to get everything.

In order to do this, we'll need to let the chemical pathways converge.

See, ants, foul spawn of the devil that they are, communicate with one another using a chemical trail. If you disturb the chemical trails, they have to forge new ones. This makes them unpredictable. We want them to follow a strong pattern so it's easier to kill them all.

So don't disturb the chemical pathways yet. Observe the enemy. Gather information.

After you've observed the patterns and have a pretty good idea where the ants are coming from, we want to see where they're going.

Most ants don't live in the house, but outside in underground nests. Once the chemical pathways are well established, do an external inspection. Find the nests.

Take pictures once you've found them, but do nothing else. Remember, this is total warfare. You are a steely warrior and will leave no insects alive!

Take the apple jelly and mix with a little water and a teaspoon of boric acid powder inside the empty ketchup container.

Run masking tape on every flat surface near the edge of your home. Lay a thin bead of the water/apple jelly/boric acid mixture on the masking tape.

Leave it there and watch the pattern of the ants. This should tell you exactly where the ants are entering from, because for a few days they will only go as far as the apple jelly to get their food. Pay close attention to pipework in bathrooms and air ductwork. Ants use these conduits just like James friggin' Bond.

If you are dealing with Argentines or one of the greasy type of ants (some ants eat sugar water, some eat greasy stuff), then use thin slices of salami and cheese.

Now you know where the ants live, where they're coming into your house and where they go once they're in. Pull up the masking tape.

Time to deploy the ant bait.

I recommend using about six different types of bait.

Place outdoor bait all around your house so that one bait (only one) is on the path from each nest to your house.

Inside the house, use five different types of bait in conjunction. I recommend using a Terro Liquid ant bait trap at each entry point with other types further in and in obscure places for humans - under sinks, in bathrooms, in basements, etc.

Watch and wait.

What you're waiting for is a dramatic decrease in the number of ants, perhaps you'll only see a few - or maybe none in the house at all. This should take about a week - I waited two weeks because I wasn't sure.

Okay, once the infestation appears to have died down, clean the ever-loving shit out of your house. Scrub down every surface, clean up every last scrap of clutter. Wash everything down with ammonia - wear rubber gloves and keep all the windows open. What you want to do is make sure that you don't leave any edible residue, like fingerprints, anywhere. Vaccuum, dust, sweep and scrub like you're Lady MacBeth on speed, only with OCD. And you think that Martha Stewart is about to drop by.

Break out the ant repellent spray. Spray along the base of your home, keeping the spray concentrated in about a one inch wide strip along the base of the wall, both inside and outside.

Use dilute malathion directly on the nests. Shut every window in your house and keep it as tightly sealed as you can. Go back inside and wait.

Within the next three days, it should start: an End Population Event. There will be more winged ants than you can shake a stick at. Many of them will be malformed and unable to fly properly; their wings should fall easily off of their bodies if they are caught in a breeze. They should look starved and confused.

Use Diazinon on the nests - the cross killing profile of Diazinon and Malathion should be enough to finish off the hardy, malathion resistant few that remain.

You may want to move your family or pets somewhere else for the next twelve hours.

For the next half-day, you will stay awake within your pristine house and walk the inside perimeter like a Guantanamo Bay Marine. Everything you see, you kill. Make sure that nothing survives.

If you've been diligent in finding the nests, this will really only take twelve hours - after that, everything that's going to come out of these nests will have come and your home will be ant free for the season.

Cackle with maniacal glee at your prowess.

Follow these instructions without omitting any step. Don't flinch. If it seems excessive, remember, ants are the spawn of Satan. They're crawiling over you as you sleep, pinching your eyelids and stroking your eyelashes with they're front claws, getting up your nose and into your mouth. They are vile, horrible creatures whose sole function is dying by your hand!

Muhahahahahaha!