If you don’t have them yet something is not right hahahahha. These little ants showed up in late February and people noticed them 3 weeks later, sprayed some over-the-counter insecticide and voala, the ants are in every bathroom besides being in the kitchen and laundry room. What happened? I’ll tell you, keep reading.
Every other home in Northbrook has odorous ants so stop blaming your town…almost everyone got them just like almost everyone in Chicago’s multi-unit buildings owned by cheap bastards got roaches…owner too dumb to understand one needs to deal with a problem pronto first before it grows into a bigger problem, and it will as problems never just “disappear…” yet they first ignore the problem until the whole building is “loaded” then hire a “big” pest company without knowing these guys work on volume: 35 units, 2 minutes per unit, no roaches hurt hahahahaha (unless they are very, very good but is unlikely someone could bother the roaches in 2-3 minutes…good techs need at least 10 minutes per unit and that’s 7 minutes more than they are allowed to spend there so let’s pity and forget Chicago and let’s concentrate on our problems: Northbrook odorous ants.)
I love them! My second-most-favorite ant, besides the Argentine ants which we should be getting momentarily…the techs that right now are 10 years old and have no idea they will be pest control technicians…they will deal with these Argentine ants but right now odorous ants…I love them because I love a good fight. Maybe that’s why I hate roaches and bedbugs…you do it right and poof, they die like the disgusting things they are but not odorous ants…no sir, these insolent little beauties got balls and will fight back and I am sure they are the reason many pest control techs went into plumbing or HVAC. Odorous ants will make you sweat but tell me you don’t enjoy the Blackhawks-Blues games…you do because it is war for 60 minutes. Odorous ants are just like hockey players: you hit them with everything you have yet if the enemy coach says to the enemy troops “go out there and make me proud you bleeding bastard” the enemy comes back, limping but comes back and tries to take your head off again and again until it does or the bell rings, or you ring his clock 🙂 That’s odorous ants…playoff hockey at its best.
You talk “survival” then you talk odorous ants. And it gets better hahahaha, it seems they are smarter every year, maybe Darwin was on something. Ok, let’s see…you noticed a few ants on your kitchen countertop…ok…you spray some insecticide and ants go away…wow…you paid $4 for the ant killer can and they all went away, ain’t you a genius? Well…if you did not crush and smelled the ant you ain’t no Einstein, rather the opposite…See, odorous ants smell like coconuts when crushed and really, really hate insecticides and will pay you back for what you did to them. You should never ever spray any insecticides unless you are sure the ants you have are the cheap pavement ants and not the expensive, classy, odorous ants.
Here’s the deal: they, the odorous ants, moved in in October. Sane ants went into ground to spend the winter in the constant 45-50 degrees that’s 4-5 feet deep (why do you think they bury the sewer pipes 4 feet down?) but some ants wanted 71 degrees so they moved with you. (same thing with geese…remember California’s advertising slogan “200.000 geese can’t be wrong?” Well now, the wise people of Mundelein fed the geese so they don’t go anywhere anymore and you barely drive through Libertyville in December because of the geese crossing the streets so same thing with ants, they “adapted” and instead of into ground, or California, they decided to stick closer to you…and we appreciate that as odorous ants make up 85% of ant calls in Northbrook). Ok, ants moved with you before Halloween and you noticed jack. They behaved, stayed out of your way but they don’t know how to count so whatever food they gathered…is not enough and by January 17 they should be running out of it. So now the scouts go out looking for food…but you get saved by the bell, ugly, ugly Chicago weather (if you live in Lake Forest your January is ugly times 4 as the wind off Lake Michigan will pacify the ants quick…). So ants postpone the feast and you see 15-20 in the bathroom and they go away just as they came, you are happy, ants are chilling. Then February comes with that 61 degree day…and now the whole colony is up and no, they won’t go back to chilling even though March says hello, always, with a big snow right about March 4…but count your blessings, others on other continents get earthquakes in first week of March…always count your blessings…Just went to my nephew’s school concert and so I had to miss Detroit Red Wings-Boston-Ugly Bruins game and I was furious but there, at school, they sang a rather sweet song I never heard before…and thanks God for youtube for I found it…”peter paul and mary “blowing in the wind” so see, count your blessings as I count mine: beside the song, I got to miss Bruins winning the game. Boston Bruins today is like Vancouver Canucks of yesterday…everyone loves their opponents hahahaha so I kind of hate Red Wings unless they play the Bruins which they did and yes, no need to scream, I heard you, we are now returning at our regular odorous ants scheduling in progress:
So now ants start patrolling…and one finds the kitchen. So cute…so clean (dirty Northbrook homes DO NOT HAVE ANTS and I say Northbrook because some homes in Waukegan for example are less than spotless yet they have no odorous ants, ever, so see, it’s weather-related then is good housekeeping-related…your whatever her name is, is good at cleaning your home…you will have ants. Bad housekeeping will give you bigger problems, lung-related problems so stick with the ants hahahaha). Ok, scout finds food (your son had a party last week in the basement and they played catch with the dog and hit and spilled some Gatorade? Don’t worry, you won’t find the spot but the odorous scout will. So now, once food source has being identified, it is marked. If I want to impress you I would tell you ants use “pheromones” but I really don’t care about your opinion: it is the ants I want to respect me so I am just going to tell you ants use own-made chemicals as markings from the food source (countertop? inside cabinets? the wall spot where Gatorade got splashed? crumbs under the sofa? etc etc etc) to the colony, gets in and tells the queens (odorous ants got like a zillion queens…don’t waste your money on bait that ants are supposed to carry and poison the queen…) “your majesty, Christmas again…humans went crazy again…supplies this way.” Or that way. (bees too do this…they point the food-gathering members in the right direction by dancing and pointing). I have no idea how ants point the colony into the food direction, all I know is what I see: they follow, like dogs, the trail left by the first scout and it goes even 50 feet…hell, it goes from your basement to your 2nd floor Jacuzzi if need be, they all march like soldiers, from colony to food source for pick-up then back home. Now you ask, as you should, how long that chemical laid down by the original scout lasts? Bad news…it doesn’t last for long time, I guess is like viruses so 2 hours should do it and that is not bad, is good from human’s point of view but is bad because ants know it and guess what the little odorous darlings do? Lay their own chemical, and so the trail gets reinforced and reinforced and before you could say “where is that phone book, I want to hire some company stupid enough to continue to advertise in phone books which not even my grandmother reads anymore” well, before you could say that, you will have 59 ants on the visible trail! (visible means in the room…the behind the walls or under-the-floor trail is not visible to you, only to us professionals…sorry…). Now you go google your town and your pest problem and by the time you find Red Raspberries Pest Solutions you have at least 74 ants on the visible trail! If you are smart, you clean them up with water, if you need your blood-pressure raised a little you use insecticides…
Odorous ants are formidable adversaries and I advise you to tell this to whomever you hire (in case you hire someone else and not the guys that know, love, respect and wipe out odorous ants, us): use dust. Tempo dust. Diatomaceus Earth (food grade only) dust. No liquid insecticides ever. The trick is not to “kill the ants” as that is kind of impossible…but to kick them outside of your house and once outside humans have a chance of teaching the odorous ants some manners. Inside homes…tough luck. It could be done but is not easy so what you want, remember this, is not killi the ants but have them kicked out. This is done via dusts so tell whomever you hire what to do unless you want the ants all over your laptop too 🙂 Odorous ants are slick and just to piss you off, might move into the door of your washer or stove! Listen, think of odorous ants as Kremlin troops. Everyone knows how to spray some insecticides just like everyone knows how to pull a trigger a few times but when dealing with Kremlin, and odorous ants, one needs professionals like 75th Rangers not Salvation Army, no matter how nice their advertising is…Odorous ants are the second-best in America and the best in Northbrook as far as ants are concerned…you don’t want a company with exceptional customer service department and outstanding sales staff, nope, you want the company whose techs use kneecaps because is very easy to spray, is hard to trip the ants into revealing colony’s location and is almost-impossible to find where ants sleep, where they get their water from (food is easy, from everywhere, duh), how they enter the homes, which plants outside they nest next to, which part of your home is ant-magnet and so on…and that’s what we at Red Raspberries Pest do: understand and, energetically fight odorous ants and we wouldn’t change our job with yours for all the money in the world. So, if you have odorous ants, go to www.redraspberriespestsolutions.com to see who we are then call and set up an appointment. If you do not have odorous ants pass our name to friends of yours that have those lovely ants, will you? Friends don’t let friends torture their ants, and themselves, with ineffective ant treatments…insecticide spraying, 7 call-backs and still, right when warranty is over, ants all over the house! We don’t know much, actually we don’t know almost anything but ants…we know ants. Odorous ants? Our specialty 🙂
PS I know, life’s not fair…you have this $1.6 mil home which means you were not supposed to get odorous ants, right? Remember the song I mentioned earlier? Both guys went bald…do you think is fair for someone who could really sing go bald? Justin Beaver or whatever his name is, he deserves to go bald, not peter and paul…so stop feeling bad about yourself…yet…you will when you hear your wife hired the most-expensive pest company servicing Northbrook and the guys first thing they did, before identifying the ants…sprayed inside the home! Now that is a reason to feel sad…the spraying not the ants…the ants are easy once you know how to “talk” to them, it is the spraying for ants that upsets me. and Justin Beaver. And Boston Bruins but I count my blessings: in my line of work I deal with ants not humans.
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