I didn't particularly want to get involved this morning with the difference between a flying ant and a flying termite, but last night's invasion of flying things in my office pretty much overruled my plans for the day. The guy on the left is the flying ant.
About 7:30 last evening I decided I'd better check my e-mail, but the minute I sat down in front of the monitor I noticed what I thought was a gnat crawling on the keyboard. I tried to shoo it away, but it didn't fly in spite of its wings. Then I saw another one on the desk, then another one on the printer. I started moving the papers around on my desk and it quickly became obvious I had a problem.
I called Jerry to come look, and as he walked into my room he saw a trail of ants coming out from a tiny hole between the wall and the wood striping at the bottom of the window sill. When I pulled the aluminum shades to the side so I could get a good look at what was going on, I found hundreds of ants - tiny little things mostly unwinged but enough with wings that it was obvious where the winged ants on my desk had come from.
Quick, Henry, the flit! Jer ran outside and found a line of ants coming up the wall from the outside, and he took care of those. I took care of the ones inside the room. I didn't want the cat to come in and walk around the sill (which she loves to do because she gets a good view of the world there) so I exited the room and closed the door behind me so she would have to stay out. I figured I'd clean it all up this morning.
Checking with Google this morning on flying ants, I found that the winged ants are the ones who are going to mate and start new colonies. And I decided NOT IN MY OFFICE!! I needed our pest control company to come in a hurry. A good online video said I should use some scotch tape to capture a sample of both the winged and the non-winged ants for the pest control service but with all those dead little bodies on my windowsill, they wouldn't need my sample. Of that I was sure.
The service only comes on Friday and only comes to those apartments who have phoned to schedule a visit. So at 8:30 I'll call the office and hopefully will be able to get this taken care of today. In the meantime, Jer will go do all our usual Friday errands and I can loll about on the couch reading "Columbine" (which by the way is an excellent, well-written and extremely interesting book) until the pest control people get to my apartment. Since grocery shopping isn't my favorite thing to do anyway, I'm fine with letting Jerry do it all by himself. I'd rather sit and read anyway, but preferably not because of ants.
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