I’ve caught a couple of what I believe to be carpenter ants in my upstairs room this year. My sister said she saw one when visiting, too. but closer by the door. The sightings are few and far between, but the most recent one was last week. Am wondering just how worried I need to be. The room I’ve seen them in are about as far from the external doors as possible.
Buy the liquid ant poison and put a few drops/globs in strategic places, such as bottom of door frames and closet frames, your sliding door to the backyard, in your attached garage. Wake yourself up at 3a.m. or play games unitl that late, and check on them with a flashlight. If lots of ants (dozens or hundreds), you have a problem. If a few, the poison should be enough.
Terro Ant Bait. Works in a few days. They bring it back to the nest and feed it to the queen, who dies. I swear by it.
This is the answer. They’re fantastic.
Unless you dislike ant genocide. :) It literally works in a few days. A week at the outside, if the colony is large or far away. But it always works. And the liquid is in a small plastic container. So you don’t have to have drops of sticky stuff on your floor. Pet safe too.
Is it? I used it for the first time and we noticed the kittens were interested in the general area where we had the traps and also vomiting. I am still not sure if it was related, but we took the ant traps down (the ants were gone, but we still had the traps out) and the vomiting stopped. Next time I spot ants I’ll have to look for some other form-factor trap besides the liquid stuff, if such a thing exists for ants.
Terro is supposed to be largely pet safe, though I might keep kittens away. It’s possible they could be sensitive to it and they’re just little things.
There are the completely enclosed plastic traps that might be better, though I found the ants start piling up around the entrance to the trap, so I’m not sure they’re as effective.
Oh, thanks for the tip! Hopefully if the ants come back the kittens will be full grown and we can just use the rest of the liquid traps we already have. The mud room where we had the traps is the kittens hunting ground for bugs and spiders and such. They’re back there every morning on the hunt.