The first order of business this morning was to usher the flock* of ants OUT. As soon as the weather warmed, the ants returned. When I first shared my apartment with them last summer and mentioned it to a friend here, he said “It’s summer.” As in, “Ants? And your point is?” (A corollary response:”Welcome to Italy.”)
For the most part, they’re really no bother. They stay in their nice, little two-lane highway from a break in the exterior wall, along the baseboard of my kitchen cabinets all the way to my little garbage bin. They don’t stray much, except for the occasional wanderer up on the kitchen counter.
With a wet tissue, I wiped and crushed the ant-stream, hurrying before word made it down the line and prevented me from getting them. When I got to the garbage bin, I carefully lifted it up, along with its external and internal crowds of ants, and carried it off to the basement garbage-sorting center… which is right underneath my apartment and probably doesn’t help at all!
There’s a new sticker on the garbage room door, noting treatments against rats and cockroaches. Tiny ants are one thing. Rats and cockroaches are quite another.
*They don’t seem very “army”-like.