Them!

A cult 1950's sci-fi movie about mutant giant ants runs through my mind as we repel the attacks of the marauding ants. Our's were much smaller, though, about 3mm (1/8 in). They were Argentine ants—a real nuisance according to the campground attendant when we checked in.


The only deterrent we had aboard Speedy was some Permethrin spray that is made to spray on clothing to repel and kill ticks and mozzies. But I knew it was also effective on ants, so we sacrificed most of it and sprayed the tires were they touched the ground and the cable and hose were they were connected to Speedy. We were told that all we had to do was protect any path from the ground to Speedy

This seemed to work...for a day or so. Then one morning I was pulling back the curtain on the driver's window and there they were—lots of little ants, on both sides of the window. How were they getting there? We looked at all the places we sprayed before, no ants. Then it clicked—the clothesline. We had stretched a clothesline from a pole on the site to the driver's side mirror. Sure enough, there was a line of ants marching up the pole, across twenty feet of thin line and onto Speedy...and into Speedy.

Out came the spray, away went the ants (fortunately, there weren't many) and a drenching of the line at each end prevented further attacks—so we thought!

Two mornings later, we are about to make our morning coffee and there are ants walking across the back of the sink; then we notice lots of ants streaming across the floor; and more ants coming out from under the refrigerator. This was serious! After a bout of ant crushing, we got out the last of the permethrin spray and hit them along the floor and under the fridge. Where were they coming from?

We looked on the clothesline, no ants; we looked at all the tires, no ants; we looked at the trailer connection, no ants; the water hose, no ants; the electric cable, no ants—look again—ants, lots of little black ants streaming up the black electric cable. We had sprayed that cable, but it seems that the weakly concentrated permethrin had broken done after a few days in the sun. We had a problem; no more spray. The short term attempt was to use mosquito repellant. We didn't know if DEET worked on ants but sprayed the cable anyway. It seemed to slow them down. But that was only a temporary respite, we needed a weapon of mass destruction.

There were still ants in the van and if the permethrin had worn off the cable, then the tires and wires were next. I remembered a sign for a hardware store in Chattahoochee when we passed through earlier on the bikes. Would it be open at 7:30am? It was onto the BMW and off to Chattahoochee. Like a good hardware store, they were open early.

It was a stereotypical Southern scene, two men sitting on chairs outside the door, passing away the time.. They welcomed me and the younger one led me to the large selection of pesticides. I wanted permethrin as I had looked it up and found that it was safe for humans. Very bad for bugs and fish, but we wanted bad for bugs and I wasn't going to pour it in the lake. They had many spray pesticides, but the only permethrin they had was in containers, so I bought the smallest and a spray bottle (and a box of ant bait cups for backup).

On getting back to the van, I noticed that what I'd gotten was a 17% concentrated solution of permethrin and it needed to be diluted. According to the directions, a teaspoon in a quart of water was what I wanted—I had a pint of concentrate.

Anyway, a teaspoon or so in the full spray bottle of water, shaken well, and it was off to the ants. I sprayed the cable, the hose, the clothesline and all tires and the ground around them. I sprayed inside the back of the refrigerator and in the outside compartment. There wasn't a moving ant anywhere around Speedy. Meanwhile, Ellen cleaned dead ants out of the van, searching everywhere she could reach. We put ant cups in the cupboard, outside compartment and under the back of the refrigerator.

We had repelled the invasion. Our defenses were strong once again. Our stockpile of premethrim WMD is nearly infinite. Science triumphs again!