On the March : Summer Heat, Drought Force Ants to Seek Shelter in Homes
“They’re not creatures you can fight--they’re elemental--an ‘act of God!’ Ten miles long, two miles wide--ants, nothing but ants! And every single one of them a fiend from hell; before you can spit three times they’ll eat a full-grown buffalo to the bones. . . . “
Leiningen grinned. “Act of God, my eye!”
--”Leiningen Versus the Ants,” a short story by Carl Stephenson
In the Brazilian jungle of popular fiction, one man’s pride and petroleum tanks overcame an army of flesh-eating bugs. But in Southern California this summer, where the perennial invasion of ants seems to be worse than usual, a battle is just beginning.
According to reports, the enemy is massing in bathtubs, trailing along faucets, climbing into cereal boxes. Driven by heat and thirst, ants are blackening sinks in Whittier, El Monte and Malibu. Two by two by two-hundred-thousand, they are marching along floorboards in Hollywood, filing up walls on the Westside.
More Calls This Summer
Once more into the breach--through open windows and ceiling cracks--go the Iridomyrmex humilis, or Argentine ant, which has thrived since arriving on American shores about a hundred years ago in a shipload of coffee and which will pester more people as drought conditions continue.
Exterminators said they are logging 25% to 50% more ant service calls this summer than last. Most of the complaints involve Argentine ants, but other species have been on the rise as well.
“For us as a company it’s great,” said Pete Horning, training director at Dewey Pest Control, which sprays about 200 Los Angeles-area homes for ants each day. “Unfortunately, for consumers it’s a hardship.” Horning said ants recently invaded his new apartment in Buena Park. “It doesn’t matter who you are, you’ve got them,” he said.
Darrell Roach, assistant manager of Western Exterminator Co. in Los Angeles, said the average ant-killing job, which usually involves a truck-mounted power-spray, costs about $95.
“The ants aren’t carrying people off or anything, but they do seem to be worse this year because of the drought,” said John T. Munro of the Pest Control Operators of California, a trade association that represents 900 exterminators statewide.
Supermarkets and hardware stores can hardly keep ant-killing pesticides on the shelves, retailers said. Jeff C. Birdsong, assistant manager of a Ralphs supermarket in South Los Angeles, said he had to double his usual order of Raid this summer; he plans to create extra shelf space for the product.
According to insect specialists, ants are invading people’s homes in search of food, water and a little relief from the heat.
“All over the country it’s so God-awful hot and dry, and the ants are feeling the pinch as well,” said Robert E. Wagner, an entomologist at UC Riverside.
“Ants can’t raise their young in dry soil, so they carry their larvae into the walls of buildings to make a better nursery. What would you do if you had kids and couldn’t give them a drink of water?”
Roy R. Snelling, an ant expert at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, who recently traced a 50-foot trail of ants through four rooms of his Long Beach home, said the current ant invasion is a phenomenon that occurs every summer.
As to how best to repulse the six-legged invaders, most experts counsel pesticides and restraint--perhaps in keeping with the Biblical injunction to “consider the ways of the ant, and be wise.”
Munro cautioned against using chemicals to excess. “Deny the ants all the things they are looking for. Keep all food, particularly sweets, cleaned up.”
Entomologist Snelling suggested following the trail of ants to its source and sprinkling cat flea powder on that spot. The active ingredient in the powder is a natural material and is not toxic to warm-blooded animals, he said.
But independent entomologist Steve Kutcher, whose accomplishments include supplying 30,000 ants for the movie “Prince of Darkness,” warned, “If it chokes bugs, it’s not good for people.”
Two-Pronged Attack
Kutcher’s strategy consists of a two-pronged attack: a hot, soapy mop followed by a caulking gun to close up the ants’ access routes. He also has an arsenal of other unusual ant-deterrent devices: “Smelly” plants, such as pennyroyal, spearmint and southernwood, discourage the creatures, he said.
Chanan Dayan, a builder from Sherman Oaks, defended his family’s home last month with an old tennis shoe and a can of Raid, but said that when he was a child, he found it effective to place live crayfish on ant nests.
Milton Levine, inventor of the Ant Farm educational toy, noted that ants have invaded his home but vowed:
“I’ll never step on an ant. It’s my living.”
Kutcher indicated that coping with the onslaught presents problems that are philosophical, as well as technical. “People should not demand total eradication, but should aim for coexistence (with ants) at a comfortable level,” he said. “People’s interactions with them are mostly ants invading the kitchen, and then calling the exterminator.
“There is really a lot more to ants,” Kutcher said. “They clean up stuff. They are scavengers. They are pollinators. Their behavior has been studied. I have eaten ant eggs and ant pupae and find them good.”
But, he added, “I haven’t tasted the Argentine yet.”
