Anthill
Image by Corey Holms via Flickr

I was sitting here this morning, while it’s about -27 windchill outside, so happy to not have to commute to work these days. I was having a nice hot coffee while I was looking through some pictures of my family. One particular picture of my son, when he was still a little guy. Man he was full of questions.

We were walking around our yard one day and he noticed an anthill and asked me why anthills keep growing. Of course I couldn’t give him a straight answer right away, that wouldn’t be any fun.

I told him the ants had backed up their toilets and had to do their business outside until they get fixed. Of course I tried my best not to grin too much and thought I had him with that response but after a second or two he said, come on Dad, really. Next I told him it was because they were good little ants and always wiped their feet off at the door to their home. He laughed at that one.

Well it’s pretty straight forward. The ants keep on multiplying and forever tunneling and they have to move the dirt they excavate to the surface so they can keep adding new rooms for the kids.

We have an anthill out back right now that double in size last year, even after we thought we had destroyed them. They are going to get another treatment this spring and hopefully they will be gone.

Note: Even after the ants seem to be gone and you dig up the anthill and cover it with topsoil so you can start planting there, they have relatives and they may just visit and not leave. Perhaps that’s what happen with the anthill colony we thought we stopped.

I guess we didn’t do the best job applying our remedy for anthills.

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Filed under: home gardening • new brunswick

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