These Homeowners Didn't Know They Had an Ant Problem—Until They Woke Up in Bed With Them
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Waking up to hundreds of tiny, biting bugs attacking you in your bed sounds like a scene from a horror movie. Unfortunately for Andrew* and his wife, it became their reality one fateful night during an event Andrew recalls as "horrifying and disgusting."
For the pair, the real-life horror show started out as a normal fall weekend away from New York City with some friends. The two couples had decided to drive up to Andrew's home in the Catskills to spend some time in nature away from the hustle bustle of urban life. The cabin is an old A-frame with two bedrooms, built sometime in the 1960s and surrounded by a heavily forested area. Andrew and his wife had owned the property for about five years at this point and had converted the attic into a lofted bedroom with the bed right under the peak of the "A", which is where the pair happened to be sleeping that night.
"It's hard to describe, but there's no crawlspace in that part of the house," Andrew explains. "It's basically like roof, insulation, and then ceiling—there's not a lot of space in between."
While there wasn't a crawlspace, there was, apparently, a hole, which led to a lot of creepy-crawlers invading the space. As Andrew and his wife were sleeping, he felt something like a fly or mosquito land on his face, he recalls. But as he tried to brush it off, he suddenly felt little biting sensations all over his body. It was then that he flipped on the nightstand lamp and was shocked to see hundreds—if not thousands—of ants pouring down from the hole in the ceiling and onto him and his wife. "It was like when you toss up a handful of confetti," he recalls. "They were just everywhere."
You can imagine what happened next: He woke up his wife by screaming bloody murder. They got the heck out of there, waking up their friends—who were thankfully staying in the downstairs bedroom—at four in the morning in the process.
What Happened Next
Obviously, sleeping in the loft the rest of the night was out of the question. After calming down a bit, Andrew sprayed insect-killer into the hole, hoping to eliminate as many ants as possible, then sealed it up. To take care of the storm of bugs that had poured onto them and into the bed, he and his wife gathered up the sheets and dumped them in the wash. "Any leftovers got vacuumed up," he adds. Shockingly, no exterminator was called—but they haven't had any pest problems since.
Upon further inspection and after some Internet research, Andrew believes that it was carpenter ants that traumatized him and his wife in the middle of the night. The species typically doesn't bite humans unless provoked, but they do like to make their nests in damp wood—which explains the draw of an often-empty old cabin in the mountains. Truthfully, it was a blessing in disguise that these biting, wood-loving ants fell on Andrew and his wife that night: Had they not been there, the colony could've easily done a lot of damage to the structural integrity of the A-frame.
How to Prevent Biting Ants from Entering Your Home
Although Andrew found a silver lining to this experience, no one wants to be the victim of a middle-of-the-night ant attack. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to prevent ants from nesting inside your home so that something like this doesn't happen to you (knock on wood). Agina Graham-Tye, owner of Graham's Lawn & Pest, explains that carpenter ants can gain access into a home by using a single branch as a bridge or climbing up those beautiful yet damaging vines that grow up your exterior walls.
"Since ants love water, they'll seek it out by collecting in the gutters and will chew through the house from there," Tye says. "Once inside the wall void, they will start chewing into the sheetrock—that's usually when people start to see the actual ant or find little piles of what looks like sawdust or dirt on the floor." Here's how you can prevent that from happening:
Regularly clean your gutters and trim trees and bushes.
Put mulch below the foundation line and apply metal mesh, such as copper or steel wool, inside weep holes.
Install good weather stripping and door sweeps. "These typically need to be changed every few years," Tye says. "If you see daylight around closed exterior doors, or feel a breeze, it's time to replace it."
Keep an eye on standing water and on mushy areas around your yard.
Remove all debris piles.
Keep firewood on or in a proper holder and store it away from the house.
Remove tree stumps if you're clearing trees.
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