[Sca-cooks] Plan of action......Re: [ ants

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Thu Oct 25 07:52:46 PDT 2007


On Oct 25, 2007, at 9:59 AM, Heleen Greenwald wrote:

>>>>
>
> Not stupid at all!! OK...question... what do weevils look like? How
> big are they?  These are the tiniest ants I have ever seen. It's like
> they are babies or something but some of them should have grown up
> since July. Also, if they are weevils, I can understand them being in
> the kitchen, but what are they doing in the bathroom?  (No food up
> there....ever!)

The weevils I've occasionally gotten in rice and flour that's been  
stored too long in a paper or plastic bag, IOW, usually the result of  
buying an egg-laden product, are very dark brown to black, very small,  
maybe just over an eighth of an inch long, and slim in proportion,  
more oblong than most ants, AFAIK. You sometimes find them in corn  
meal, beans and peas, and dried pasta.

They don't really look like ants, but they are very small and would  
require some pretty sharp eyes to see much detail. Confusing them for  
ants would not be impossible.

> OK..so here's my plan of action...what do you think?
> Today I am going to throw out ALL of my flours, grains etc.... wash
> down with amonia water. Pretend I am Ruby from Upstairs Downstairs
> and scrub the kitchen within an inch of its life...or my
> life....depending how tired I end up.

I can't really say, although it sounds like it might work. Is your  
Tupperware all newish and in good shape with tight seals? I use glass  
jars myself, and haven't had a weevil sighting in years. We sometimes  
get an ant wandering in off the balcony when the door is open in the  
summer (we've got a sort of magnetic screen/curtain arrangement which  
more or less works, but isn't perfect). Generally we put a line of  
boric acid down at the base of the door, and that always seems to take  
care of it.

[Conversation from my early childhood that has since entered family  
folklore --

OLDER SISTER, maybe 7, looking at Brooklyn rooftops from window of NY  
City elevated train, asks mother: "Is this a Depressed Area?"

SELF (maybe 4): "What's a Depressed Area?"

SISTER: "A Depressed Area is a place where all the houses have roaches."

SELF: "What are roaches?"

SISTER: "They're what poor people have in their houses instead of  
ants. Rich people have ants."]

Speaking of Ruby, I had occasion to see an old YouTube video the other  
day (well, the content was old), of various Sesame Street Muppets,  
along with a plethora of show biz and sports figure types (Okay, I  
watched it to see Keith Hernandez and Mookie Wilson in their '86 Mets  
uniforms singing "Put Down the Ducky"). Somewhere in the middle of it  
all, there were multiple appearances by Mister 'Udson and Rose,  
squeaking rubber duckies and singing...
>

Adamantius



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