OK more like ants in the pantry.
One of the things you have to get used to living here in Darwin is living in harmony with ANTS, well I wouldn't say living in harmony more like tolerating them. You see all throughout the house are we find these little tiny ants, they call them sugar ants, and no matter where you are, kitchen, bathroom or any wall, you see this guys scurrying around looking for something. Now often when we have splashed something on the wall near the sink they absolutely swarm it. Now watching them is pretty interesting as ones coming from their hive/house come to the food the others going back touch them for a second. I guess they have some sort of way of communicating, through touch or just having a quick chat. Now if you get the dish cloth out and start wiping the wall then they run like anything following the path they came down, they must leave some sort of scent, then if they see another ant coming down they touch it and communicate, AHHHHHH RUN, and they turn around and run like heck. Now there can be say 50 ants in one moment then 10 seconds later they are all gone, except for a few that didn't get the AHHHHH RUN message. To fix them we usually wipe up the wall with cleaner where they came down this hopefully removes their scent trail. At least that's what we figure.
So according to a BBC Australia program Australia is basically an ant haven. They build all sorts of famous mounds that are tourist attractions, they have carpenter ants eating the rotten trees and more ants than I'd like to go into without getting all itchy. Now in the garden we have I'd say 3 types of ants. Sugar ants, something a little bigger and some green ant that's even bigger. Now they say once the wet seems to be getting near they tend to migrate into the house. Boy looks like we are going to have one heck of a summer and herding . Needless to say the stores sell all sorts of sprays and stuff to control (that's a nice way to put it) ants when they decide to come to visit. Currently we only have to deal with the sugar ants and they are always anywhere you seem to look down. Which is everywhere.
Just writing this I feel that I've got them crawling on me or at least I feel all itchy. So I guess we'll see what happens and report it as the ant migration occurs. I figure we have a few more months be for the "ANTS GO MARCHING ONE BY ONE HURRAY, HURRAY...."
