The Ants Go Marching

It seems that we are being forced to share our apartment. Ants have moved in and they do not want to leave. I suppose they were here first, but if they insist on staying I'm going to have to have a talk with them about splitting the rent.

I discussed the wonderful encounters we have had with ants in my last entry, but I'm going to go into a bit more detail and expand of a few other unfortunate incidents as well - only this time, I have pictures!

So we moved in and immediately realized that our toilet was not properly installed in the bathroom and that ants were coming out of the base of it.

It's turned the wrong way, but you see the cracks around the toilet and you can see the ants (although they were actually coming out from the other side of the toilet)

We called the leasing office and someone was sent over to fix this little problem. He caulked in the toilet properly, killed the ants and was on his way.

Shortly after that we saw what we were sure to be a cockroach in our kitchen. We only saw one, did some research and took some precautions in case it was in fact a cockroach. I still believe it was one but when I contacted the leasing office the lady told me it was "probably just a water bug". I don't really care what it was, I'm just glad it's gone and we haven't seen any since.

A few days after the cockroach we started finding ants in our kitchen. They were all around our sink and we quickly realized they were coming out of an outlet near the sink. They were literally coming out of the outlet and the sides of the outlet. So off we went first thing in the morning to get some caulking, some plugs for the outlet and some liquid ant traps/poison. We came back and sealed that baby up.

In the kitchen by the sink - spot #1 in kitchen

A few hours after sealing it up we realized there were still ants coming from somewhere else. Upon further investigation we figured they were coming from somewhere in the cupboard. We decided it was time to moved all of our food and try an ant traps. So we did and slow but surely, out came the ants.

Shortly after putting out the poison 

A few hours after the poison was out.

And this is what it stayed like for days inside our cupboards.

The next day the toilet popped free of the caulking the maintenance man had put around it and once again there were cracks all around the toilet, we decided it wasn't a big deal as long as ants weren't coming out of it and we just let it be. In the kitchen we kept finding holes in our cupboards that we thought the ants must be coming from but they still just kept on coming even after we closed the holes. After a few days of having the traps out we found this:

A huge crack where the ants were coming from. Spot #2 in the kitchen

Yup, that is where they were coming from. There were still tons of them so we put a trap on each different level of the cupboard and then put one trap in a neighboring cupboard. Then we had another fun incident; a leaking ceiling.

The "yellow goop" as I called it, coming out of the ceiling

The goop on our counter-top

We came back from the gym and this was what we found. It was disgusting. And of course, it was a Sunday, so no one was around to fix it. There was one girl in the leasing office who said she would put in a message to have someone come by the next day. Thankfully by the next day the leak dried up because no one ever came over. On Wednesday I finally got fed up, the ants were still in the kitchen, no one had come over or called about the leak and my toilet wasn't connected to the ground.

I contacted the leasing office again and within a few hours an exterminator (or some kind of pest control guy) came over and put stuff all around my kitchen. He said that within a few days the ants would be gone. Shortly after he left the maintenance guys came over. First they looked where the leak was and just said "Oh, on Sunday we sprayed down the stairs and it isn't water proofed up there, so it leaked, no big deal" and they did nothing about it, they didn't check the ceiling or anything. Then they looked at the toilet and the guy said, "Well I'll have to take it out and put a new base on it, it will take all day, I can't do it until next Tuesday". I wasn't in much of a rush for it considering no ants were coming out of it anymore, it was just annoying to have a wobbling toilet.

Within a few days the ants died off like the pest-guy said they would and we had a few incident free days (well, aside from an earwig yet again falling magically off of the ceiling and this time instead of landing on top of my head, landed on Jason's leg - he was laying in bed).

Our counter-tops are speckled with black, brown and grey spots, which really makes it difficult to spot any ants crawling around on them. I've learned to hit them really hard and the vibrations make the ants scramble and then I can get them!

Then, yesterday, the ants came marching in. They came marching in out of the teeniest, tiniest hole you have ever seen. But they were still pouring right out of that little hole and right back into my kitchen. UGH! So, I pulled out the caulk and it filled up that stupid hole. And I filled up a whole bunch of other holes near it. They were gone for a few hours. Then later last night right before bed Jason spotted them... in the bathroom, coming out from under the toilet. Evil little insects. Best part about it was that yesterday was Tuesday, the day the maintenance man was supposed to come over to fix the toilet, but he never did. We decided to deal with the ants in the morning.

Spot # 3 in the kitchen. If you look closely you can see the fresh white line of caulking .

This morning I was ready to deal with the ants. I laid in bed last night plotting ways that I could get rid of these awful bugs. What I wasn't expecting (though I don't know why I wouldn't be expecting it) was for Jason to wake me up to tell me they were now back in the kitchen coming in through the telephone jack. It didn't matter, I woke up ready for battle this morning, and battle I did.

Spot #4 in the Kitchen

First I covered the phone jack with masking tape and then a used the caulking around the jack. I spent some time killing the ants that were crawling all over my kitchen and then it was time to tackle the bathroom. I had the idea of putting a book between the back of the toilet and the wall because that would hold it steady, preventing it from wobbling. It worked wonderfully and then I pulled out all the old caulking around the toilet and went around it with fresh caulking.

I am most proud of this one. I hope my book doesn't get ruined from the moisture in the bathroom, but you can also see the fresh caulking around the toilet as well as 3 ant traps on the ground, haha.

For the last couple of hours my life has been ant free. I don't imagine it will last, but I will enjoy every minute of it that I get. My mom said to me "It sounds like the walls are just infested with ants" - which I believe to be true. I'm disappointed with the way management around here is responding to me asking for help. But we only have another month and a half left here, and hopefully it won't be as full of ants as our first month has been!

I didn't find ants coming out of here, but there was a hole and ants were in the area, so this was just  me trying to get ahead of them. I used masking tape to cover the hole and I put caulking along the cracks. This is right under our sink.