In my time as someone who lives inside buildings, I’ve had to deal with two insect infestations. The first was bedbugs, which had a huge impact on my last year of grad school. Then much later, my current apartment had a moth problem.
I now have an ant problem. For the last two years, residents in my building have complained about ants. How do ants even get into a high-rise apartment building? I knew these ants were steadily making their way up from the ground floor.
Several months ago, I’d see a random ant here and there, maybe a few weeks apart. Since it was one ant, it was really difficult to figure out where they were coming from. I’d see an ant in my bedroom, in my kitchen, or my bathroom. I’d kill the ant and then move on with my day.
Last week, I saw as many as ten ants at a time in my bathroom. I’m not 100% certain but I believe they are using the pipes as conduits to go from floor to floor. I’m also pretty sure they’re not going up the pipes from inside the pipes. I think they are climbing the outside of the pipes. The ten ants I saw were fairly close to my bathroom sink, underneath the cabinetry.
It’s still not a major problem but it could turn into one any day now, so I’m going to spend this weekend doing a thorough investigation. Residents who live on lower floors are reporting much more dire situations, with some saying they’re battling hundreds of ants in their units.
I need to deal with this problem in a serious way. My initial strategy is going to be preventing them from entering my apartment, so somehow sealing off areas of ingress. A friend of mine has recommended a type of trap that doesn’t kill them off right away. In fact, the trap is so attractive to ants that I’ll see even more of them if I hadn’t laid the traps. Apparently this is as designed, with the bait in trap being harmful to the ants and it lets them live long enough to bring the bait back to the nest, thus killing the ants who were foraging in my apartment plus the ants back at the nest. Where are they nesting though? The most logical place would be somewhere near the ground floor. I live twenty-eight floors up though and when I think about how far that is for an ant to travel to get back home, it boggles the mind. I’m human being sized and it takes me almost five minutes to walk down the stairs to get to the ground floor. How long would that take for ant? Would they even be able to get to the nest?
In any case, this is just another pain in the ass that I need to deal with.