Once you start seeing ants around the house, it seems like it’s a never-ending problem – unless you want to resort to dangerous chemicals, which can be toxic to kids and pets (not to mention the environment). There are actually some fairly easy, humane, green ways to kill ants – or if you’re really a softie, to divert them away from your house.
Your mileage may vary with these four methods from wikiHow, and which one you choose might depend on your ability to stomach ant violence. Method 1 involves pipe tobacco, glue, baby powder, red pepper, chalk and lavender – check it out on the wikiHow page. The following three methods are a bit simpler:
Method 2: Fill a spray bottle with highly concentrated soap water. When you see ants, just spray them and they’ll be dead on contact. Wipe up the carcasses with whatever they were trying to eat. Within an hour, any stragglers will have dissipated.
Method 3: Collect a large number of ants from one ant hill (easy to do just leave some food in a container, return after 2 hours and you should have heaps. Drop all the ants in the container onto another ant hill and the ants will start fighting each other resulting in many casualties.
Method 4: Spray 3 parts dish soap and 1 part water on them and they will die instantly.
Method 3 seems kind of cruel but fun for those with suppressed homicidal maniac tendencies. If you’re too squeamish to kill them, one tip is to place a partially open jar of honey up in a tree in your backyard. The ants will seek out the honey instead of raiding your home in most cases.
Link [wikiHow]
Photo credit: Flickr user striatic
