Marching

Standing on a kitchen chair whacking ants off the ceiling with a damp kitchen towel is oddly therapeutic.

Today is day three of the Great Ant Crisis of '09. It's becoming an epic battle. I can't for the life of me figure out where they're coming from. After removing every piece of furniture from the kitchen, including the stove, my best guess is that they spontaneously generated in the brown sugar and have been marching from behind the stove, up the wall in one corner, across the ceiling, down the wall in the other corner, and back again ever since I discovered and removed their beloved home (the brown sugar). They don't seem to have gotten into any other food, though they made a courageous attempt on the cookies that I had cooling on the counter this afternoon.

The one flaw in my conclusion about their origin is that they don't seem to be decreasing in numbers despite massive casualties at the hand of my dish towel. I'm doing everything I know to do about ants, and there's no change. I've wiped down every surface, including the ceiling, with vinegar to get rid of their little chemical trails. I've left out baits, which they don't seem interested in, even when I tape them to the wall directly in their path. I've sprayed around every possible point of entry. I've cleaned the floor and secured all food, and I've cleaned and dried out the sink because they like water too.

The up side to this is that my kitchen is C-L-E-A-N.