Abattoir of ants

Or go, go spiders—but not too much

We’ve been in this house just over three years and for three years, we’ve endured invasions of ants in May and June. I do not know why they want to come during the lovely summer months. I’d think there would be more suitable food and water outside, but no. In they come.

And so for three summers—soon to be four—we’ve put down ant hotels and cardboard squares with small dots of Tero on them (but those have to go someplace the cats can’t reach as it’s quite deadly).

It's like nasty sprinkles

This year, we have an unexpected ally as you can see in this photo. That window is on the right side of our fireplace and those black specks on the sill are dead ants. Dead and desiccated, I might add. There’s a spider in the second photo, although I’m not sure you can see him (her?).  Clearly this has been a year of feasting for the spider.

The spider is the bigger blob
in the sort of channel in our
wood paneling. See it?

I also don’t understand why spiders come into the house this time of year.

In addition to the one in the photo, yesterday morning there was a fairly large specimen in the shower with me. Normally they stay put and I give them the evil eye and agree that if they don’t move, I won’t kill them. This one, sadly, felt the need to crawl all over the shower caddy. So I used the attachment on our shower head and washed him right on down the drain.

Goodbye spider!

Spiders and spiders and spiders, oh my!

Two years ago, I shared a photo of a honking big spider that built a gigantic web from our pergola. We named him/her Ralph and left it alone.

A descendant of Mega Spider built another web out there last summer, but I never did get a picture.

This year we have two. Such riches of spiders, it's a wonder we have any bugs at all. But Saturday we did go ahead and break apart the webs because we were cleaning windows and screens and the webs were in the way. Not to worry, though, one of  Ralph's great-great offspring had already rebuilt by the next morning.

A new neighbor

We have a grill out on the patio, but in all honesty we haven't used it this summer. It's just been out there collecting dust on the top and leaves underneath. Now it's also become part of the anchoring for a spider's web.

Our spider is no teensy, weensy spider crawling up the water spout. No, he's pretty big, easily half dollar size, not one you'd want to run into in the dark. The other day, a locust/cicada blundered into his web and it was good bye bug.

Seeing this spider makes me think of my older son who as a little boy and even into his teen years was utterly terrified of spiders. If he even thought for a moment that he'd seen one, he'd run shrieking out of the room. Once he got stuck in his bedroom on his bed because he'd spotted a spider but didn't know where it got off to.

So this picture is for him: