That's how you get ants

This year has brought a new pest to the neighborhood - tiny black ants. We first saw them in the kitchen, walking along our stove to points unknown.

They seemed to be entering from the door to our breezeway. I first tried a combination of ant traps and generous amounts of cinnamon. It seemed moderately effective, but the ants soon found paths around the cinnamon, since it can't be applied to vertical surfaces.

Finally I got tired of wiping up ants every few hours, so I applied insecticide to the door frame, which mostly stopped them. I later found another trail of ants leading from the dishwasher, so I applied some around (not in) the appliance. As long as we don't leave any sticky food out, the ants seem largely under control.

Unfortunately ants keep appearing in other parts of the house. J found a trail of ants and their larvae swarming our door frame. Another application of bug spray around the door frame took care of them.

At this point, they were just an occasional nuisance.

Then they upped their horror level to max.

In case the videos don't work, here's a picture. The little jerks have built a nest. Inside the switch. In fact, they were so successful they ran out of space inside and started storing larvae outside the switch. After looking in horror at them for about 10 minutes, I figured out a course of action. I couldn't just nail them with insecticide because the switch and power plugs were mixed in with our pantry. Fortunately none of the food items were open, so the ants were just attracted to the electrical charge or something.

So, step 1: vacuum. It was pretty freaky to watch the ant population suddenly triple in size as they tried to flee when I started sucking them up. About 30 minutes later I had vacuumed up 95% of the ants. It was pretty satisfying. Especially since the Dyson suction is powerful enough to kill them by the time they got to the canister.

White is kitty litter. Black/cream is ants/larvae. About 1 inch worth.

The network switch was the most problematic, since most were inside. No matter how many times I hit it, more ants came out. I eventually put it in a zip lock and took it outside to disassemble it.

Contents of the switch after I cracked it open.

I think the ants were coming in from the fireplace trim in the basement, so I aggressively sprayed that and the entire fireplace. I also wiped the switch, power adapters, and power strip in insecticide. When I plugged everything back in (just a few things at a time, just in case they came back in force) I ran the cabling a few feet above the floor to make it harder for the ants to find it.

A week or so later, the ants haven't returned - but it is really nerve wracking because they apparently could swarm anything that is powered. Since we enjoy stuff like lights, internet, and TV, we have to keep the power on, which is a problem because that's how you get ants.