Ant Bully?

You decide...

Since early spring, I have had ants in my kitchen. At first it was one or two here and there, then they picked up numbers, and by now, I see and remove about fifty or more ants a day. I vacuum them, I sweep them, I sprinkle cinnamon on their trail to confound them and drive them away. And it is always the same story, they are gone long enough to make me think I've won, then as soon as the vacuum is up, the broom is hung and the cinnamon is back in the cupboard, they are back. For a while, I thought that I was really making progress against them, but they had actually made progress against me. They went underground and would seemingly appear out of thin air to cart off all the crumbs that accumulate in a house with two toddlers. Normally, its not my style to wage war on anything, least of all small harmless pests, but they make me feel like my house is dirtier than it usually is (and their sheer numbers are frankly alarming me, we've all seen A Bug's Life, for heaven's sake!)) so "my live and let live" attitude changed today. They slipped up and led me to their entrance. They are amazingly smart, for something no bigger than a flea. They have devised a system of getting around the kitchen and dining room unnoticed. I had suspected they were getting in near the front door, but couldn't ever find a definitive start point to trace them back to. Today, after eating breakfast, I came down to recharge my precious, er, I mean my iPod, and when I went back to the kitchen to do dishes, I found about a hundred ants flocking to a piece of pancake with syrup on it. It was a good sized piece, otherwise, I don't think they would have been so careless to blow their cover. But blow it they did. I was patient. I waited while they loaded up their little ant jaws and made a line back to the baseboard, which has about a 2 cm gap between it and the floor, (and which is how they've been getting around by the way). It was easy then. They ran back to their entrance, I just watched the ones with pancakes, they were all going the same direction, right to the door...then, out came the vacuum, and the big guns, the caulking gun, that is. Yup, I sealed up their entry point, I even pulled back the carpet in the corner and filled the gap there. I don't want to get too haughty, but I really think that is the end of my ant problem. Time will tell.

As promised, here are some pictures of the raffle sock. Just your basic sock pattern, nothing too exciting since it is for a raffle, so I am happy enough to make them and since I have no idea who it will go to, I don't even have to put any kind of thought into them.