I don’t think this is a Costa Rican thing.  This is really just a common sense life thing that you should never forget, even if you are really excited in a new place and wanting to soak in all the sights around you.   Remember to keep ALL your body parts and valuables inside your vehicle.

They are everywhere.  On the ground, on the floor, on the walls, absolutely everywhere.  They have no mercy.   They are relentless.  And they will suck your living soul and sanity dry and empty until you die a slow and painful death and scramble around madly to find ways to get rid of them.They are huge.  They are mid-sized.  They are tiny. They are red, black or brown.  They like grease.  They like sweet.  They bite. They itch.  They just like being to drive you mad and loony.  They. Must. Die. NOW.

I felt bad at first for killing so much life (I would always apologize and say “sorry” for about the first 100 hundred ants we killed – then I lost my mind and everything went downhill from there as you can see from my violent rant and throws towards warfare and blood lust).

They are not your friends they are not – no, no, friendly at all they are not. Kill them you must.  –Speak here with really bad Yoda voice (and end.)–

So I did what any reasonably sensible person would do, before my crazies overcame me and short of a using a nuclear bomb, I Googled what to do.  The advice was like going to 10 different doctors (because I only look at the first 10 results in Google).  It was convoluted and complicated.  Some sites say boiling hot water.  Some sites swear by vinegar.  Some go by the old borax and poison trick.

I think the key is to try a combination of everything and you have to do everything often.

You could try ignoring the issue and just let nature do it’s thing.  Unfortunately I am too obsessive to do that so here’s a list of 3 easy things we did to control our ant issues.

1.  Check to see what areas in your house they are attracted to – you should start to see a recurrence or pattern of sorts.  For example, ours were attracted to our kitchen.  Specifically the stove. (Didn’t know why at first – you’d figure the hot burning elements would burn the little F@#Kers!).

2. Figure out what they like.  You should notice that they like to cluster in groups around a problem area.  For example, after we cooked food the buggers liked to congregate in specifically greasy patches on the stove.  So in our case our little F@#Kers liked grease.  Like I said in my earlier in my rant – some like sweet.  Some like grease.  Find out what they like and use that against them.

3.  Use whatever you can (boiling water, vinegar, RAID – whatever) and KILL THEM.  We were looking for safer, more natural alternatives to RAID and the like because I only wanted to kill them and not me, so we use the dish soap and Green Works Spray method.  You could try vinegar, chalk or whatever you think will work – at this point they are yours for the killing so just use whatever you need to get the job done.  We like to say things like “DIE!”, “Bye Bye F@#Ker” and the like when we do it.  Try it – it’s a stress reliever of sorts.

I understand you can’t really kill them ALL and I’m sure they serve a purpose of some kind – but it sure is fun to find different ways to kill deal them.  And it’s not all evil, like I said I used to feel bad. Honest. I even said to John the other day that I wished they would just stay out of the house so we wouldn’t have to kill so much, just before I set our stove on fire to kill another batch that had sneaked into the house.