It's ant season again. I swear my house sits on the granddaddy of all anthills!! Backyard is nothing but streams of ants and we've had multiple incursions into our house already. Got a 10lb bag of food grade diatomaceous earth for the yard and any crevasses in the house and several bottles of Zevo. It's tough to keep ahead of it with so many cats, thus many bowls of cat food and 5 water fountains. I did find out last year that ants don't die when microwaved. 🤬 #ants #bugs #needaflamethrower

@Embers my yard has ants galore too. i use diatomaceous earth to keep them out of the house also. maybe a pet anteater?

@holon42 That would be an interesting addition to our backyard 😄 Not sure how well it would get along with the raccoons, opossums, skunks, and feral cats 😀

@Embers it would be an interesting encounter. i just interrupted a raccoon under the bird feeders. i bring them in at night, so he can't pull them down. as it is, he digs up the mulch around there looking for seeds the squirrels missed, and, i suppose, the grubs and such living there too.

@holon42 I put out dry cat food for the ferals and other critters so they don't bother much with the bird feeders. Have 2 mama raccoons bringing their babies to eat just now, one has 4 babies, the other has 5. Sooo cute!! Hopefully will get video of them playing to upload. 🙂

@Embers i try not to encourage raccoons since they can decide to set up house in attics, etc, so i am nervous about them becoming habituated. i'd love to though, they are so cute. cleaning up around the feeders keeps it clear so rats won't get attracted. my garden is rewilding so there's a lot of high growth, and i have to be careful.

@holon42 That's a really lovely garden space! Raccoons den in the easement the flood control creek runs through behind my house, only had one injured one hide in one of our sheds. We took it to a rehabber.

@Embers yes, i get raccoons here regularly to clean up under the bird feeders. good, no food left to attract 🐀 rats 🐀😱

@holon42 We had a horrendous rat problem for about two years then a new batch of feral cats started hanging around the yard that were much better hunters...thank gawd! Had to replace the wiring harnesses in 3 of our cars thanks to rat damage!

@Embers so the feral cats solved the rat problem? i did see a neighbour's cat with a rat in its mouth during that time. this year, no sightings so far.

@holon42 They absolutely did! A couple of them were superb predators! Unfortunately the girl Tuxie whose kittens we socialized/found homes for then trapped, spayed, chipped, & vaccinated, who was the best ratter has now disappeared 😪 We hope she just found a different backyard where people were putting out food for strays as she was getting attacked by one of her kittens that we missed that had grown bigger than her and was super territorial but we'll never know and are sad about it.