An Irishman's Diary

It must have been a relief to many people to learn recently that there has been a general upsurge in indoor ant activity. I suspect the problem had been a shameful little secret in many households until then - a feeling summed up in the comment of one woman I know who said: "If you write about the ants in the newspaper, I'm leaving you."

It doesn't matter that the red ant is a clean-living insect which doesn't carry diseases and, long before there was a Green movement, was recycling its own waste. Nor that, as the Trinity College zoologist Martin Linnie said last week, ants "carry out some very useful functions" in the garden (which is more that some of us can boast).

Indeed, the diligence and efficiency of these insects is attested to by the names given to them: worker ants, soldier ants, carpenter ants, encyclopaediasalesman ants, and so on.

Jeff Goldblum

It doesn't matter that the ant is like no other insect. For instance, it should never be confused with the fly, a disgusting, hairy thing which, when studied under a microscope, looks like Jeff Goldblum. If you don't already know the sorts of things the fly does on your food, you don't want to know. Suffice to say the term "lewd act" doesn't cover it.

But, even with the best will in the world, ants are still not welcome indoors. Partly, it's because of their general association with other insects. But partly also, it's the fear of their legendary organisational talents and what they're capable of achieving in a short space of time.

You see a group of three or four ants and you think: they're not doing any harm. But for all you know, they could be an advance scouting party for AntOperation Barbarossa. Then you turn your back for a minute and next thing you know they've carried off the new sofa.

So we were taking no chances when they turned up in our house. And during the last few weeks I've learned quite a bit about ant psychology and its application to counter-insurgency techniques.

For instance, I discovered that the old-fashioned ruse of putting out a jam-jar half-filled with water is completely ineffective. In fact it was a joke, as far as the ants were concerned: groups of them would gather around the jar, antennae on hips, guffawing at the obviousness of the ploy.

But then I had a breakthrough. I discovered that by (a) raising the jam-jar and (b) bringing it down sharply on the group of ants, I could achieve a dramatic reduction in the amount of local ant activity. This was only a short-term gain, however, and there were always more to replace them.

Corporate plan

As is well-known, ants operate along the lines of banks and other large companies. There is a sort of overall corporate plan, but the individual workers generally have no idea what's going on. This makes intelligence gathering difficult - nobody gets information out of an ant, not even David Attenborough.

But another problem I found with the recent ant explosion is that our ants appeared not to be working to any pattern at all. They weren't soldier ants, marching in single file from one fixed point to another; nor masonry ants, carrying bits of our home away for use in ant housing projects. In fact, they never seemed to be doing anything in particular.

As far as I could gauge, these were delinquent, drop-out ants, without any sense of direction and with no interest in work. I've checked encyclopaedias and I can't find any mention of such a phenomenon, but it could be that the ant community is going through some sort of crisis of confidence, a bit like those affecting the former "tiger" economies of south-east Asia.

Maybe, after millions of years of relentless work and high growth rates, ants are asking themselves: what's it all about? And the ones that can afford to (theirs is a rigidly stratified society) are dropping out to pursue more meaningful activities, such as hanging around our kitchen.

I know some people will say this is anthropomorphism (from the latin ant, meaning "ant", and thropomorphus meaning "dragging out a subject to fill the space"). But the thought that these might be the insect equivalent of the hippies of the 1960s was intriguing. It certainly made squashing them with the jam-jar more enjoyable.

Anyway, as a result of our battle with the ant population, I can now pass on a few tips to anyone still dealing with the problem (courtesy of the Natu- ral House Book, published by Conran Octopus at £12.99).

Walnut leaves

For a start - don't ask me why - planting mint outside your house will keep ants away; sprinkling dried chilli or paprika around doors and skirting boards will do likewise; and boiling walnut leaves is also an excellent deterrent. Failing all that, you can put the mint, chilli, paprika and walnut leaves in a cake and leave it out for them to eat. It may not kill them, but they'll be so busy recycling their own waste, you won't see them for a while.

The combined jam-jar/chilli treatment seems to have worked for us. For the moment, our ants have returned to the outdoor life, where even now they are now carrying out many useful functions in the garden. I only hope they get around to mowing the lawn soon.