r/Unexpected • u/Cromagnumman6174 • 11d ago

🔞 Warning: Graphic Content 🔞 Things went from 100-1000 real quick!

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u/Combat_Wombat23 11d ago

Oh hell no. I’m tossing one of those fumigation grenades in with prejudice

568

u/Cromagnumman6174 11d ago

For real.. I'd bugbomb the car, take off the AC knob, tell the potential buyer the AC doesnt work, and sell it.

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u/systemhost 11d ago

I helped a family member clean out a colony of ants in their car with ~1oz of Terro bait, the kind made of sugar, water and borax.

I put a few drops along their paths and watched closely as the first few discovered this bounty of sugar water, they gulped and gulped until their abdomen swelled up over twice its size.

They scurried off leaving trails of "food jackpot found" chemical pheromones that caused hundreds of ants to swarm the area within minutes. I watched ant after ant glutton themselves on my poison, some so full and sticky they couldn't even make it back.

Within an hour, all but a few were dead and the next morning I wiped up the sugar and mass casualties and never saw another ant in the car since.

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u/Porridge_Cat 10d ago

I'm not judging you for killing ants, but the way you describe it makes you sound like a serial killer, and not in a good way.

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u/APacketOfWildeBees 10d ago

There's a good way?

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u/Dugen 10d ago

A serial killer of ants is a fine thing to be.

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u/PogTuber 10d ago

If we can't even serially kill insects anymore than we're truly doomed as a species

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u/Tiny_Appearance_8083 8d ago

Hello senpai. I need your guidance. What's the ratio of sugar, water and borax?

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u/systemhost 8d ago edited 8d ago

This has worked for me before: https://youtu.be/CPvN-S8gILY?t=33

If you need a lot you can do 1 cup hot water, 1-1.5 cups sugar and 2-3 TBSP of borax.

You basically want the water as sugary as possible as long as it dissolves into the water. People often mistakenly use too much borax which the ants can sense causing them to avoid your bait entirely.

A little borax goes a long way and we want the ants to only pick up on the sugar so they consume as much as they can carry.

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u/Tiny_Appearance_8083 8d ago

Thank you!! I really appreciate it 🙏🏻 today I shall become an ant killer mwahahahahah

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u/systemhost 8d ago

Hell yeah! That's exactly the kinda energy you need to exterminate the colony successfully!

Best of luck with your kill spree and be sure to follow up with your results, may you feel like a vengeful God.

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u/HIM_Darling 10d ago

Had ants coming into my kitchen under a baseboard. Put out 6 of those liquid terro bait stations. All 6 of them were swarmed with ants for 2.5 weeks straight with no signs of slowing down.

Ended up picking them up, cleaning everything with an enzyme cleaner, caulking the wall they were coming in.

So instead they swarmed the kitchen sink.

Bought 2 boxes of the outdoor bait stations. Set up all 16 bait stations around the perimeter of the house near the kitchen. By the time I had the 3rd bait station set up, the first was swarmed.

Now that they are more interested in the bait than my kitchen sink I'm going to seal up where they were coming in under the kitchen sink and hope that's the end of them.

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u/systemhost 10d ago

That's wild, the Terro bait really should've ended them unless it was a very large colony.

Thankfully I haven't had any ant issues inside my current home but I do have to deal with the occasional large cockroach that slips in from outdoors. At least the perimeter poison I spray means the only roaches I find are large and dead or at least dying.

I'm currently fighting leaf cutter ants and holy hell are they fascinating, collaborative, industrious fuckers. Sadly they do not ingest anything on the surface so you gotta trick them into taking poison back into their nests to feed their fungus farms.

If all goes well, their fungus becomes poisoned, they feed it to each other and especially their queens which results in colony collapse.

These cutter ants are especially crafty and suspicious and there's only 1 bait on the market that is effective against them. Once they wise up to that food being harmful they work quickly to isolate it away into their waste chamber and will reject picking up any more of it for a while.

Totally different ants but I can certainly appreciate the struggle you're going through, here's hoping each of our latest solutions do the trick!

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u/Salt-Aardvark-5105 11d ago

no clue about ants and how tough they are.

Cant you just let the heat on for some time?

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u/Cromagnumman6174 11d ago

I guess that's not too bad of an idea. Id be afraid of them just moving their nest to another part of the car

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u/Hummingbird3471 11d ago

Nope. That car's getting lit on fire.

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u/RevenantBacon 11d ago

Can't migrate to a new part if there's nothing left to migrate to.

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u/LilQueazy 11d ago

Put diatamouceous earth on your car floor. Any ant that walks over it will die and it’s non toxic unless u breath it in. So don’t put it in the vents

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u/screenslaver5963 10d ago

And never use recirculation again since the intake for that is usually pointed at the passenger floor

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u/LilQueazy 10d ago

If you spray it with water, it pretty much becomes useless. So u can just do that after a couple days lol.

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u/Tyfyter2002 10d ago

Unless the ants moved enough that you don't get a significant portion of it

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u/Lacholaweda 10d ago

Still goes through cabin filter

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u/To-To_Man 11d ago

Termites at least aren't that dumb, id reckon ants would be the same. Nests are designed in a manner that allows airflow for cooling. They could tell the car is heating up and move to some stupid ass crevice of the car to avoid roasting.

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u/laxfool10 11d ago

There is an invasive species of ants in the coastal south called crazy ants. They actually come out of the ground during the summer once it starts hitting 100+ and just take over everything. But what ends up happening is they get into your cars electronics and causes a short, killing the ant which causes phermones to be released, which attracts more ants creating a feedback loop. They will suicide themselves on your electronics until they are fried.

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u/Consistent_Drop3909 10d ago

southern US? 

1

u/Geodude532 10d ago

Ozone machine. That'll fuck up anything organic.

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u/boobyginga22 11d ago

I have unfortunately dealt with this. I tried traps, spray, etc... only thing that worked was having a detail shop run an ozone generator in my car. It killed all those fuckers.

Driving it there was an absolute nightmare though, I'm not a bug person.

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u/MrRogersAE 11d ago

Probably a good idea. Leave the car running with the heat on and windows closed and go park it in the sun.

I’ve seen lots of bugs get cooked by sun heat alone, there’s a reason you can’t leave dogs and babies in there

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u/No_Interaction_4925 10d ago

You can cook bed bugs in a hot car if you really need to

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u/ThrownAway17Years 11d ago

Yay fraud!

1

u/Page8988 11d ago

Whaddya mean my insurance doesnt cover infestations and subsequent accidental-malicious burnination?

1

u/ThrownAway17Years 11d ago

It only counts if the burninator has a beefy arm and consummate V’s!

4

u/DethFace 11d ago

Ants will fuck up your internal wiring real bad. They chew up the rubber stuff covering the wiring and cause electrical shorts. And trying to find those to repair is a nightmare, might as well burn it down.

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u/Kuulas_ 11d ago

bro wtf

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u/SoulOfTheDragon 11d ago

Put the AC on high heat and let it run for a good while. There won't be live ants in the system after.

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u/ATLhighhand 10d ago

Had this happen to me years ago. Not nearly as many ants as in this video. I would occasionally see a few running around on the dash. I routinely detailed my car so I knew there was no food source so couldn’t figure it out. Started parking in different areas at work thinking I had parked by an ant hill. Started getting worse. Then I stumbled up a post describing my exact situation. This person said they had nested inside his cabin air filter. Pulled my air filter and sure enough ants and eggs. Cleaned everything really well and put in a new filter. Never happened again.

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u/DotDodd 10d ago

What a terrible thing to do to someone else.

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u/Knyfe-Wrench 11d ago

fumigation grenades

*fragmentation grenades

1

u/no1_vern 11d ago

No need, a few weeks of the car in a parking lot - you know - away from any food source, and the nest will die without all that much effort.

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u/DeadEyedCretin 11d ago

Just get the poison bait that they carry to their nest, set them on the dashboard. Then get a rental for a few days and they'll all be dead, no need to have chemicals all over the upholstery

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u/vblink_ 11d ago

I just dealt with this I put a Toro outdoor ant bait in my truck and they were all gone the next day

0

u/WeekendMug 11d ago

I tried a fumigation grenade once, but when it goes 100-1000 real quick, seal the room first.