If You've Ever Had Ants in Your Pants You'll Want to Read This!

When I was a kid, every spring, when I’d hear that old teakettle start to whistle, I knew my grandmother was boiling water but not making tea. 

My Bubbe (pronounced Buh-Bee) emigrated from Russia, arriving in America alone in 1913 when she was sixteen. She was proud of her Russian ancestry and maintained certain traditions throughout her life.

One of those traditions was wearing Russian shoes. These heavy, black leather lace-ups were part high heel, part work boot; purposeful footwear and not very stylish by any stretch, but her shoe of choice. In our family, they became known as Bubbe Shoes.

Bubbe would boil water, take the teakettle out into the front yard by the walk, and pour it on the ants that foolishly had ideas of invading our home. Bubbe was brutally determined to wipe them out, even if it took all morning and several teakettles. I watched as the ants floated to their death in the boiling water, Bubbe’s face stern and unemotional. 

I remember seeing the ants begin to scatter at the mere sound of Bubbe’s shoes making their way down the front stairs in an unmistakable cadence. Bubbe meant business when it came to killing ants, and the ants knew it. She was barely five feet tall, but her tenacity was unparalleled.

Many years later, I have continued the tradition. No, I don’t wear Bubbe Shoes, but I kill ants. I guess I despise them as much as Bubbe did, a trait she undoubtedly passed on to me. But I am a modern-day, sophisticated ant killer—no teakettle for me. I use Raid Max Bug Barrier. I buy the gallon container with a battery-powered spray head on the end of black plastic tubing that extends out of the top. It works.

It was during the spring of 2015 that I made my way around the foundation of our 40’ x 24’ split entry ranch, and after spraying, I didn’t see any ants for months. We have a two-foot-high stump in our front yard by the driveway that is smack in the middle of a flower bed. While edging and weeding the bed, I discovered thousands of ants of all different sizes on the stump. I got my Raid Max dispenser and immediately went to work.

After exterminating all the visible ants, I began peeling off all the dead bark and rotted wood, only to discover layers of ants and ant larvae. At that point, it was apparent I needed the internet-

After a successful Google search, I knew I had a colony of carpenter ants residing in the moist, rotted confines of the stump, a favorite place for ants to set up shop. They don’t eat the wood but meticulously excavate it into living quarters. They can travel over 100 yards. My house is only 30 yards away from the stump. They had to be stopped!

Wearing ankle-high work boots and cheap, brown cloth work gloves I picked up at Benny’s, I took the straight claw end of my hammer and started peeling off the rotted wood. With the removal of each layer, more ants and ant larvae spilled out of the rotted stump. I sprayed the ants and then peeled away more wood. At one point, there was a significant movement in some rotted wood, a section covered by a thick layer of thin-rooted material. But it appeared too large to be an ant.

I kept spraying the area, and suddenly, the head of some kind of pest showed itself. At first, I thought reptile, maybe a snake. I was cautious, but I kept spraying. Suddenly, the creature started to panic and made its way out of the stump. I jumped back and took a good look. It was two and a half inches long and one and a half inches wide and resembled a Cockroach. It was a scary-looking thing, too! 

The Raid hadn’t killed it but had it staggering and on the ropes. I watched as it struggled to remain upright. I knew I had to kill it. I positioned the gallon container of Raid Max over the creature, and in one swift downward movement, I crushed it and heard a loud crunch. I lifted the blue plastic container off and saw the creature split open like a Piñata, spewing ant larvae around it.

This was no ordinary insect; this was the queen carpenter ant, the ant solely responsible for reproduction and the continuation of the colony, capable of producing 300,000 ants. She lay there still moving, and in an act of pure humanity, I crushed her one more time, putting her out of her misery. The Queen was dead! The colony would not survive without her, and according to the internet, there's only one queen per colony, and I killed her.

I grabbed my spade shovel and, in one quick motion, slid it under her and had her centered. Holding the shovel end away from my body, I carried the corpse across the street to a wooded area, and in what resembled a one-timer, with the flick of my wrist, she disappeared deep into the woods.

As I put away my tools, I knew I had done well in preserving the tradition started by my Bubbe. She would be proud. I can only hope that one day, my cadence will be as recognizable as hers.

When my wife came home from work and asked, “How was your day?” all I said was, “Good,” knowing she would never understand…