Ants in my Pants

One of the domestic challenges of life in the tropics is ants. These tiny red buggers get everywhere, literally. It's not uncommon to find them crawling up your arm while watching TV, over the computer keyboard whilst you're typing, or floating in your cup of tea or glass of water. They're very small (about 1mm long) and pretty harmless but constant vigilance is required unless you want to wake up in the morning to find a column of thousands of ants coming in the front door, marching across the floor and into the kitchen bin in pursuit of some tasty morsel.

As domestic leader, it's my responsibility to take the fight to them. Unfortunately, ultimate victory is really out of my grasp - it's more like trench warfare. Every day the ants advance (over the top lads), I try to remove any potential food sources (especially by emptying the kitchen bin), sweep them all up and we start over again. I dread to think how many i've killed, it's lucky I don't believe in Karma. Mostly, we've gotten used to living with them now, just occasionally it really gets to me, like when I bought a nice french stick for our drinks party, left it on the table, and came back to it 30 minutes later to find it swarming with a hundred of the little blighters. Grrr...

Em's work colleague who lived in the Pacific was telling us that he used to put the kitchen table legs in 4 bowls of water and keep all the food on the table. It seems easier to keep everything in the fridge though, regardless of whether it needs to be refrigerated or not, and this is what most people here do. The three or four squished ants on the refrigerator seal are a testament to their determination...quick lads, now, it's open...