As much as I love living in Oregon there are a few downsides. It’s a temperate climate, which means spring starts in March (although the rain does not stop when spring starts, it just gets generally warmer). Because of this, we have an extremely long ant season. Two days after I first moved into this apartment there were swarms of ants, in the pantry, in the bathroom*, in the cupboard over the stove. I threw a mild tantrum about this, having never experienced this kind of infestation anywhere. Luckily, the rent I pay covers pest control and I happened to report it to the office while the pest control man was there and he came up and treated my apartment and put down some traps. Since then, we’ve never had an infestation anywhere near as bad, although we continue to have them, intermittently.

We had our first of this warm season on Sunday. A few scattered ants had shown up lately, skittering around the microwave cart as though they owned the joint and I’d wipe them up and carry on. On Sunday, by chance, our garbage can was pretty full and had been pushed back to make contact with the wall. And oh, did they swarm, from the corner of the kitchen winds in a line down to the trash. Many many ants. Enough to make my skin crawl. There were even a few in my (thankfully) nearly empty airtight sugar container. I began wiping them away with damp paper towels, and then rubbed the rind of a lemon wedge against the wall since I’ve read they don’t like citrus oils. We tied up the trash and took it out, swept the floor well and moved the foodstuffs off the microwave carts. Since then, I’ve only seen a few ants hanging around so I’m calling it in my favor.

*Apparently ants can be attracted by soap and shampoo and the like. Additionally, they like to travel along warm water pipes in the walls, hence how easily ours traveled between the kitchen and the bathroom.