death to carpenter ants

There was a lot of death here today.

I'm happy about that.

Carpenter ant death.

I had a hose hooked up to one of the rain barrels this spring.  I would notice carpenter ants (the big black ants) traveling up the outside of the hose toward the barn.  Hmmmmm, that's strange.  La la la la la, on with my day of horse stuff and I forget about it.

We get the house inspected every once in a while, and the guy mentions to watch for power lines that have trees touching them because carpenter ants will use it as a way to access the house.  I said, well, how about a hose...  We go and look, and there they are... happily doing whatever they do when not eating wood, milling around in and out where their colony must be up at the barn.  Carpenter ants are aggressive wood destroyers.  They hollow out wood to nest in.  They do this quickly.  They are dead now.

Today the man with the carpenter ant killer spray came.  He killed them.  The dogs and horses were nowhere near the barn, and the spray is a chemical that stays put where you put it and dries quickly.  It's called termidor if you care.  It's an excellent product, it works for termites and other things too.  Termidor kills a carpenter ant that comes in contact with the stuff after a few minutes, and if that "tainted" ant comes in contact with an ant that did not cross the path of termidor, it will die too, the stuff on the "tainted" ant will kill the untainted ant.  Like a really bad party. Termidor Site

This is before the poison guy came.  This is the corner of the barn where I would see an ant or few. 

There is an ant in this photo... but its hard to see because it's... um, an ant.

Hey ant, whacha doin'?  Want Mr. Poison guy to come bring cocktails to your big party?
How odd that they made their colony here... along a concrete sono tube... they must be in a beam on top of the sono tube or under the ground in the wood chips.

Mr. Termidor poison man sprays the heck out of this area, and they are piling out of the ground evacuating...

There are several ants in this photo, sorry to dumb this down so severely, but the tiny black specs are ants.

Ants, about to die.  They have touched the poison and are trying to remember what they were doing 10 seconds ago.  In their ant brains... that don't exist.

Ok, don't let this photo make you cry.  But, these are ants carrying their little ant baby cocoons out, presumably to save them since some chemical was just dumped on their colony.  But, they too are going to die in a matter of minutes as they have touched termidor. 

Sorry ants and your ant babies and ant moms and dad, and grandparents and aunts and uncles.  But you should have found a tree to live in, not Java's Barn.

This morning there are heaps of dead ants near the area, like they piled out to find Java and apologize.  Hey ants, too little too late.

Next up, fencing the pens in...  The excitement!!!