How to deal with Ants in a student house.,

1. Put down shitloads of ant powder — available from Barnitts.
2. Put down ant traps — round things that look like coffee coasters, available from the Mecca of Barnitts and made by Nippon.
3. Wait and see what happens.
4. If that doesn’t take care of them, then you have a Problem. Capital deliberate. Move any freestanding objects — fridges, washing machines, etc. If there are a lot of ants behind there, that’s part of your problem. If there is what appears to be a lot of cereal (bran stuff) spilt there, you are now looking at a nest. This is bad. If you just see a few ants, move to stage 8.
5. Find a vacuum cleaner with a hose attachment. Suck it up, biatch.
6. Dump the bag full of ant nest and pissed off ants in a bin well away from home, or ideally over the fence of someone you don't like. Anyone who does this to me gets a big bloody knife through their ribcage.
7. Put powder down. If they come back, go to stage 8.
8. Take the kickboards off the cupboards. (Those bits underneath that you always kick when you have no shoes on, and are there to keep the base of the cupboard off the floor. Usually screwed on, or just shoved in. You need a picture?) See if there are any ants there.
9. There are ants, and millions of them. Description of nest at stage 4. Also looks like spilled hot chocolate powder. Get the Hoover. Dispose of ants and nest. Powder down. And I mean so heavily that it looks like there was a bust at a cocaine dealers or an explosion at an icing sugar factory.
10. Take kickboards off _all_ the cupboards to make sure that you got them all. If there appears to be a hole in the wall, put tons of powder around that, and polyfilla it up if you can.
11. Call landlord - explain what you have done. Tell him no need to panic, you think it's all sorted now.
11. Give it time.
12. If they come back, repeat. Call landlord and repeat statement.
13. If they come back a third time, call landlord and tell him you are calling Rentokil and you are not paying. You can now sound justifiably pissed off. Hopefully, he will agree and let you get it sorted, or arrange it all himself. Either is good. Get the professionals in, and make sure you get a) some sort of guarantee; b) a receipt.

Enjoy. And don't anticipate getting rid of them in a hurry - they may well come back, having had a quick unplanned holiday in your neighbours house. If you live in a detached house (lucky sod) then you are liable to have to act out a Final Solution esque thing, where no ant within 50 feet of the house is left without either being covered in boiling water or that white powdery shit. Alternatively, leaving them with only two legs out of six is funny, especially if they are on alternate sides and ends of body. I am not a Janeist or Buddhist - and they are in my bloody house without paying rent. Screw them.

2337/18/08/2002

My ant problem now appears to be proper sorted - landlord found nest under concrete slab in back garden. This is good.

Addenda - alternative places to find a nest besides kitchen. This is unlikely, due to the fact that they will want to be around sugar. Still, here we go.

Wood floors - take up carpet, see if you can see a hole where they are coming in. In so, get the vacuum down there, lots of powder, hope for the best. If you can't see a hole, try to get one or more of the floorboards up without breaking it - then have a look, vacuum, etc.

Concrete floor - get _all_ the carpet up, and find the hole. There must be one somewhere. Boiling water, then powder once they have all come up to the surface. Next, polyfilla over the hole, and _do_ _not_ cover it up - keep an eye on it and hope for the best.

If you find a nest in an armchair or some furniture, get it outside, and burn it. No shit, burn it. There will be eggs in there, and you'll never be rid of them. Sorry, but that's it.

0015/02/08/2002