So there I was, just now, cleaning up the south wall of the carriage house in preparation for drywalling it, and there was a lot of crumbly dirt at the base of the wall. I pulled out the fiberglass and - have you ever seen an anthill in your house? No? Me neither, until today.Nope, they're not carpenter ants, just bog-standard large-issue black ants whose anthill happens to be in a place that stays miraculously warm through the winter. I feel almost apologetic kicking them out.
Well, with as many cracks and holes as you've been patching, that room has been effectively outdoors for a long time. I'm not really all that surprised that you'd find an anthill.
ReplyDeleteI've not had them build an anthill in the house (I think-- we do get a lot of ants in the house) but I've had to evict them from some of my potted plants.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we had a fire ant nest in a bag of potting soil down in P.R. - ouch! And once we had ants actually swarming in a house in Bloomington, coming out from under the furnace, clearly also a normal underground nest - but this is the first time I've seen the actual friable dirt mound inside. Lots of it, too.
ReplyDeleteI checked it again today; they'd already brought up another several cubic centimeters of it; I Shopvac'ed up the new dirt and caulked where it had appeared. That'll stop'em.