"Tex John" wrote in message
...
Are the ants awake in Austin yet?

Here in Houston, I have huge ants exploring everything including my
computer
desk! Keep telling the wife and kids -- no food outside of the dining
room!

John

First of all, I used to have ants in my house so bad you could put a
sandwich down on a paper towel, type a sentence this long on the computer,
and pick the sandwich back up only to find it covered with ants. They were
in the kitchen, the living room, the bedrooms, my office, the bathrooms...
you name it, I had ants!

But no more. This is how I got rid of them...

I went to the hardware store - Lowe's I think since it's closer to my house
but you could go to Home Depot or you can probably find the same stuff at
HEB or Randall's - and spent about ten bucks on ant baits. I bought
packages of ant bait for out side - they had little silver disks with holes
in the middle mounted on plastic stakes - plus I also bought a bunch of
"Terro" liquid ant bait in little plastic rectangular shaped containers.
Then I treated the whole house, inside and out.

I put the little disks on the plastic stakes all around the foundation every
five feet or so, especially outside my kitchen and my office. I put one of
the little plastic trays with the liquid on my desk behind the monitor. I
put several more in the kitchen - one behind the coffee maker, several on
different shelves in the pantry, others in various places that I could think
of where I had seen ants especially bad.

By the time I was finished I could go back to the first container that I had
put down and it was already filling up with ants. They went straight to the
bait and haven't bothered me since. That was over a year ago. I have no
ant problem now.

You have to use a bait formulation and you have to treat the perimeter of
the house as well as the inside. Ants come from the outside so you have to
get them where they live.

Hiring someone to go around an spray everywhere is a waste of time and
money. You don't have to spend a lot of money but you do have to use a bait
and you have to be thorough.

Good Luck...