Do I have like 100 other interesting things I could blog about? Of course I do! But what am I going to blog about instead? My ant experiments. 🙂
We’d had a little problem with ants for the past several months. Nothing we try stops them. They always come back. It’s annoying, Very annoying. But at this point, I just kind of accept it as a way of life. All our food containers go in ziploc bags. And all our open plastic bags get folded and clipped shut. It’s just the way it is.
As I almost always do when I’m trying to find a DIY solution, I turned to Pinterest. I found that cinnamon is supposed to deter ants. Cinnamon, huh? I have cinnamon. Actually I have a pretty large container of cinnamon that I got at the dollar store or somewhere for really cheap that I can afford to waste doing experiments with.
The past two days, while KP was at work (I’m sure he would not have been keen on this idea if he was at home) I sprinkled cinnamon on our counters and in the sink during the day. Surprisingly, hardly any ants showed up on those surfaces. So…with this possibly proven hypothesis, I started brainstorming ways I could test this further. I decided that what I needed was a cinnamon ant maze. Yes, like what fancy scientists do with lab rats. A cinnamon ant maze is what had to be done and would give me verified results.
I probably should have tried this on a weekday when KP would be gone all day….but nope, for some reason I got the urge to try it this afternoon, when KP was only escaping for an hour or so to Starbucks to finish up some work. So I could only gather so much data before hurriedly wiping it all away as soon as he walked in the door. (I’ll wait to notify him/present him with my findings after I can experiment further…or until he reads this…or sees me uploading and looking at random ant pictures on my laptop and asks what I’m doing… :))
Experiment 1: Honey Bait
No ants seemed to care or notice! I tried brushing some ants over to the honey, but they just got stuck in the honey. And died I think. I then went and googled and discovered that ants don’t particularly love honey, because they get stuck in it too easily. Go figure.
Experiment 2: Colored Sugar Water
This time I got smart. I tried out another fun Pinterest pin and decided to dye some sugar water to see if it’d change the color of the ants. So I mixed up three different colors of sugar water, like this:
Now normally, I don’t want ants to come eat my food, but this time, I wondered what took them so long to get there!! It probably took at least half and hour or something for more ants than normal to begin scurrying around on the counter, but they still weren’t all coming over to the sugar water! Hmm…a few did, but it was nothing like the pin, which is what I hoped I’d get.
BUUUUTTTT – a couple ants did eventually venture over to the green sugar water, and guess what? They actually did turn a shade of green!! I don’t have the best camera, so I tried to get a picture, so eh, it’s not the best, but it’s still pretty cool:
The whole time (which was only about 30-40 min. or so, really, I did not give this experiment time to work/not work), not a single ant played along and tried out my cinnamon maze. Bummer. 🙁 However, right at the very end, I noticed that an ant had gotten into the blue sugar water – the one with bait completely surrounded by cinnamon! He was covered in cinnamon though and seemed to be drowning in the blue sugar water. I tried to get some pictures, but it’s hard to see the ant. He just looked like a pile of innamon.
KP got home at right about this time, so I had to wipe everything away quickly. But rest assured, there WILL be a replication of this experiment! Probably on white paper so its easier to see the ants, and I will leave them out for several hours to hopefully attract more ants. I’m sure you all are going to wait with bated breath now for my follow-up post to this…
I have such a super exciting life, right? If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around and being friends with the weird kid still. 🙂
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3 Comments on Me verses the Ants. verses Cinnamon.
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So funny!!! Love it. Of all the things we could spend our days doing it still amazes me at the things I really do. I’m just not as brave as you and openly admit I watch ants! Love it!!! Let me know it you find something that works….
I kinda wish I wasn’t living in Maryland at the moment ’cause I kinda want to come over and do this with you. I’m really curious to find out the results!
Hey Beth; it would be fun if we could do this together! I will let you know what I find out, and document with pictures. 🙂