We have a remarkably bug-free house. Roaches, nope. Spiders, nah. Creepy crawlies of all sorts are intermittent and usually only come in through an open window or door. Except for pesky, annoying little sugar ants. They seem to be impervious to all our efforts and, not only that, but when they show up, they come in the millions. OK, that’s an exaggeration – it’s only thousands. If we don’t do battle, though, they might be here in the millions.
Don’t get me wrong. We’ve killed zillions of the darned things. And yeah, I know – I don’t like to kill living things. But I like even less living in a house that’s overrun with insects. The sad part is that no matter how many we exterminate, they just come back.
So, to our latest experiment: we’re trying a formula that is supposed to really repulse them, which is what we want. The formula is this:
1 cup of water
1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
15 drops of tea tree essential oil
15 drops of peppermint essential oil
This stuff is POTENT! I made it and inhaled a lungful and immediately started coughing, and coughing, and coughing. Wow.
And another drawback is that it’s orange colored, because of the cayenne pepper. So don’t spray it on your white walls. We don’t have any white walls, but the message is that it will stain.
On the plus side, the ants immediately shriveled up and died and the survivors ran for the hills. They came back the next day and we sprayed again. Only time will tell if enough spray will end the problem.
I’ll let you know in a future column. And if anyone has any brilliant ideas, we’d love to hear them.
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