A How To On Dealing With Ant Infestations
At debrief at the beginning of the month, we stayed at a lovely hostel called Mabuya Camp in Lilongwe. It is a great place to stay, except for one little thing…. There are ants. Lots of them.
I woke up one morning in my tent. Did my usual morning stretch. I noticed there were a few more ants than the normal four or five wandering around. There seemed to be more near my pack. “Hm, that’s odd….” I thought to myself. I lifted up my pack and lo and behold: ant infestation!
There were hundreds of ants, all beginning to scatter now that I had revealed their hiding place. I had to get up and go to a meeting so I didn’t have time to deal with them right away. And, I’m not going to lie, I really didn’t want to deal with them. I wanted to put it off as long as possible. So I left it alone for a few hours. Which brings me to the first step of my How To on dealing with ant infestations:
1) DO NOT PUT OFF DEALING WITH THE PROBLEM.
This will only make it worse. I came back to my tent and they were all over my sleeping pad, sleeping bag, sleeping bag liner, shower bag, laundry, towel, everything. They seemed to have multiplied. I knew I had to deal with it then.
2) EMPTY YOUR TENT OF ALL BELONGINGS.
Clear out your tent, one item at a time. It might be useful to have a friend with you. I was blessed to have the help of two of my teammates, Liz and Brooke. Thanks ladies!
3) CLEAR ANTS OFF BELONGINGS AND SET BELONGINGS INTO AN ANT-FREE SPACE
It may seem obvious, but I was setting my cleared-of-ants stuff onto a grill which I later found out also had ants. Not the best idea. Clear the ants off the smaller items one by one and set them in an ant-free environment. You may want to leave the bigger items for later. I set my sleeping pad aside to deal with separately. The Lovely Liz helped me clear it off.
4) BEGIN TO CLEAR ANTS OUT OF YOUR TENT USING DUCT TAPE
Wrap duct tape sticky side up around your knuckles. Go over the floor of your tent, using the duct tape to pick up the ants. You may need to get a fresh roll of duct tape every so often depending on the amount of ants in your tent.
5) DUCT TAPE BOTH SIDES OF THE HOLES IN YOUR TENT
So the way the ants get in is they chew holes through your tent. I had eight new holes in my tent courtesy of the ants. I duct taped both the inside and outside of the tent to repair the holes. This is crucial, otherwise the ants will keep coming in.
6) DO A SECOND SWEEP FOR ANTS USING DUCT TAPE
Now that the holes are covered, there should be no more ants coming in. Shake up your tent and get those lingering ants out of there using the duct tape method.
7) FIND THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM AND ALLEVIATE IT
Now this may seem like something that should have come earlier. But, in my opinion, you need to wait for this step. My reason being you need to take care of your stuff first and the source of the problem might be really disgusting, and might hinder your ability to handle the situation. In my case, the ants had decided that the space between my tent and footprint was a great place to start a colony. They had begun breeding and there were hundreds of ants and eggs making camp on my footprint. I was glad to have not known this while I was dealing with the problem. I had to wash my footprint to get rid of them.
8) FIND A NEW PLACE TO PITCH YOUR TENT
You definitely want to try and find a place that doesn’t have an obvious ant colony nearby. Keep an eye on your tent and the space between your tent and footprint to see if there are any small gatherings of ants. These small gatherings can turn into huge infestations overnight.
9) FINAL TOUCHES
There may be some items that you could not clear off with duct tape. For instance, my sleeping bag liner and towel. I had to wash these things to clear them of ants. Also, my sleeping bag has cracks that are hard to reach with duct tape. A crafty way to handle something like this is making a small broom out of leaves and brushing the ants off with it.
And that’s all it takes! It’s not so hard, especially if you have some help. I don’t wish an ant infestation on any of you, but if it happens, God speed and good luck!
