Anyone know a way to kill sugar ants that won't hurt my unborn baby?
Question:My husband is at work for another 4 hours or so and I don't want to touch the bug spray we usually use. I discovered my son must have been eating cheerios in his room and some fell behind his bed. I vacuumed it up but everytime i look there are more ants on the wall. Suggestions?
Answers:
If you're not afraid to use Windex, that works well. It might require a trip out, but "Seventh Generation" makes a non-toxic all-purpose cleaner like Windex that does the trick as well. It only kills ants on contact- it does not prevent ants from coming back once it's dried or evaporated, though I've found that eradicating them enough times using this method usually gets the message to them somehow! I did this when I was pregnant and had the same problem- and had a very healthy baby!
In India I put fresh mint leaves and cayenne pepper at every crack and crevice through which ants could come, and rubbed the mint leaves everywhere I saw them. They were gone after that. Thanks to Mr Patel, my apartment smelled lovely and was ant free.
don't leave around food for them to come around.
ants detest the smell of peppermint...try to get some peppermint essential oil to use as an air freshener and they will run away...good luck!
put grits alongs the wall. ants will eat the grits and it swells in their stomach and kills them. also, they take the grits to the queen and when she eats them and dies, the colony moves on. another option, lift your carpet and stuff aluminum foil (tightly) in the crack between the sheetrock and foundation. ants cannot chew through the foil. this is a method my parents used in my room as a child and suprisingly it worked immedietly and the ants have not been back in the room for 25 yrs now.
Diatomaceous earth, available at home improvement and garden centers, is a non-toxic, safe substance made up from crushed fossils of freshwater organisms and marine life. Crushed to a fine powder and observed through a microscope, the particles resemble bits of broken glass. Deadly to any insect and completely harmless to animals, fish, fowl or food. Most insects have a waxy outer shell covering their bodies. Diatomaceous earth products scratch through this shell causing the insect to dehydrate leading to eventual death.
Here is a sure-fire way.Go and buy some semolina from the food shop.It is a type of pasta.Put in jam jar lids, and leave in places ants are in.They (ants) love it, and eat it, and take it back to nest.Problem for the ants, they can't digest it, and they die.It's easy, cheap, and safe.
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