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Last year we had an ant invasion as well as a couple of smaller incursions. This was about the time newborn Micah came home from the hospital, so July and possibly the beginning of August. Since then, only a few scouts, as we call them, have made it into the house.

That is, until we came home from our trip to Oregon (which I'll go into later). We parked the car in the garage, and as I stepped out of the car, I saw a long trail of ants passing by me. Oh no, this is going to be trouble.

And trouble it's been, nearly every day we've been home (since last Sunday). The initial day we spent about two house killing them. They'd been coming in from at least two different places, from the garage and from a minuscule crevice at the bottom of the sliding glass door that leads to our back yard.

Only a few had made it into the pantry, striking it rich on the maple syrup bottle. But as a precautionary measure, I took every last item out of that cupboard to make sure others weren't out of sight. I did find a couple. The others were dutifully trekking the expanse of Pergo floor and white walls in the kitchen and living room.

Over the last week, we've clashed with the ant army in numerous places. I was alarmed to find them in the cooking utensil drawer. They had made their way in through another microscopic crevice behind the cabinets, which required the removal of some drawers to locate.

One place they love to travel through is the window above the computer desk. There's nothing much like the jolt of seeing ants running across the top of the monitor and under the keyboard.

This morning, much to Bryan's dismay, he saw some ants going into the garbage can. The trail led back up to the ceiling. His eyes followed the trail angling up to the apex of the vaulted ceiling, which then followed the angle back down and across the top of the fireplace chimney to yet another tiny gap between the wall and the brickwork. This was the largest incursion since last Sunday's original battle and took Bryan over an hour to fight them back.

We've done some research and basically, we will not win this war. The type of ants that we are blessed with lives all over here. For each ant we kill, there are probably hundreds if not thousands waiting. If we were to kill every last ant on our (rental) property, more ants would just move right in. They find their way under the house and into the walls in the summer and since we apparently have walls made of swiss cheese, come in at their leisure.

I suggested to Bryan that we move, since our lease agreement holds us responsible for any and all pest control matters. Too bad this area is Ant Paradise, moving wouldn't be much help at all. Only moving AWAY, and that is not happening yet.