Green Living by Janet Marchant: Another Tip for Green Pest Control

If you're like me, you're always forgetting to put the lid back on the sugar bowl after sprinkling your organic cornflakes. Well, the other day, I was shocked to discover the open bowl swarming with ants! There must have been nearly three of them! Of course, my first impulse was to grab my can of Raid Green, but I suddenly remembered how woozy the smell of it makes me when I use it outdoors. Using it inside would probably just make that problem worse.

Hoping for a green but more pleasant alternative, I went online and found out that the very sugar that seems to attract ants can also be used to help destroy them. As soon as I saw that, I knew what to do. Hopping in my hybrid SUV, I drove to Wal-Mart and bought a bunch of the biggest bags of sugar I could find. Then I dumped them out in one of those places that the City reserves for people to drop off old couches, rags, empty beer bottles, t.v.'s, random construction debris and other junk, reasoning that such a location would be safe for the aerial bombing that might be necessary to destroy the ants once they all congregated on the huge sugar pile.


You see, I remembered that this strategy worked well in the 1954 documentary Them! You can see from the picture above, taken from that film, that the giant ants are climbing up a big pile of sugar, where they make an easy target for the aircraft above.

So remember, all-natural products like sugar can allow us to use nature to fight nature, and that's what being green is all about!