The ants have disappeared. Vanished completely, without leaving so much as a note. Only two weeks ago, our back garden looked like the south of England before D-Day, as a massive force of ants under General Eisenhower gathered for the long-awaited invasion of the house.
Last-minute training was in full swing. Young ants were being put through their paces for the umpteenth time, so that each would know exactly what was expected of him (yes, I know they're female, but this is a metaphor) when the time came for the treacherous crossing of the patio.
Friends were making plans to meet after the invasion. "See you in the food cupboard," they said to each other, knowing that some would never make it.
Meanwhile, inside the house, advance parties were engaged in intelligence gathering and mapping, identifying key cracks in the floorboards and locating spider positions. One group was building a tiny reviewing stand in the kitchen, confirming suspicions that the ants - the leading workers of the world - were planning a march past on May 1st.
I was away over the bank holiday weekend, and when I returned I half expected to find ant roadblocks on the garden path. Instead, nothing. Only two things can have happened, I reckon. Either the manoeuvres were just a big decoy operation, and the ants have actually hit the house two doors down; or something more tragic has befallen them.
I note from my encyclopaedia that ants are not good at generating heat and like to occupy warm spots. So, ominously, does the neighbour's overweight cat, who spends most of her time around our place. If she flopped down somewhere at the wrong moment, she could have wiped out the invasion force at a stroke, before any of them had a chance to squirt formic acid at her big feline butt. Whatever it was, they are gone, for now at least. Other people have not been so lucky. A reader in Salthill, Galway, has written to me, pleading: "Please do not use my name in print, as my neighbours will never visit me again if they hear of my new `lodgers'!"
The lodgers are ants, needless to say, and they've invaded her house ("just the kitchen at the moment") for the first time in 36 years - which gives you some idea of how much time ants put into planning. Her letter continues: "I am really at my wits' end . . . they are making their way into presses, and I spend all my time killing them. Have you any answer? What did Maeve Binchy do?"
This last question arises from my reference to a column by Maeve on the same subject last year. And no, I don't know how or even if she got rid of them. But as I recall from what she wrote, her initial approach was to carry them gently back to the garden, telling them little ant stories along the way in case they'd be frightened. That's the sort of person she is. Another letter comes to me from Joyce in Cork, whose house like ours has paving stones out the back, where the ants hibernate.
"They decide to come and live with us from spring onwards until late summer, when they swarm, complete with wings. Last summer, in the middle of a dinner party, we had such a swarm, I shudder to think of it." She adds: "Any information on their elimination from the Irish Times insect file would be much appreciated."
I don't suppose it would have helped save the dinner party, but the swarming Joyce witnessed was the so-called "nuptial flight" - the annual fertilisation process; which ends, according to my encyclopaedia, with the "death and destruction of the males". Typical.
Two things occur to me from this exchange of correspondence. One is that there's a humdinger of a pun here somewhere based on the term "agony aunt". And, if I may slip on this hat for a moment, the other thing is that shame and self-recrimination are all-too-common responses among victims of ant activity. Which is why we have to keep telling ourselves that - no matter what our wives say - the ants have nothing to do with us leaving crumbs behind us everywhere.
Unfortunately, the Irish Times insect file is not big on ways to exterminate ants. In fact, it consists mostly of eulogies to the little buggers. Like ant specialist Bernard Werber, telling our columnist "Y" that ant society is "a republic of ideas", in which no one has to give or be given orders. Each member acts independently and the overall design of the colony is achieved despite the fact that no one ant appears to have any idea what the others are doing. (This is the model for many large organisations - the Department of Justice, to name only one.)
Bearing this sort of thing in mind, you might want to start out by using peaceful, environmentally-friendly methods against your ants. The Natural House Book (Conran Octopus, £12.99) suggests a number of non-violent ways of deterring them, including planting mint outside your house and sprinkling dried chilli or paprika around doors and skirting boards.
This seemed to work for us last year, although I believe my tactic of killing one in every five and leaving the bodies spaced out at intervals on the garden paving helped as well. The book adds ambiguously that walnut leaves - "six handfuls to a pint of water boiled for 20-30 minutes" - are an excellent deterrent, though it doesn't say exactly how. Maybe you boil the ants with the walnut leaves - I don't know.
If this doesn't work, you can always resort to insecticides. And if your problem is particularly serious, you can call one of the many pest control companies in the Golden Pages, such as Dublin-based Anti-Pest (slogan: "The bug stops here"), a spokeswoman for which explained they used strong chemicals and power hoses. Sounds like student-riot control, but there you are.
Failing all that, the Irish Times science editor, Dick Ahlstrom, tells me you can get ant traps. The pest control company didn't know about these, and maybe you can only get them in America (that's where we got Dick). But apparently they consist of little containers which attract the insects by smell and, once inside, nuke them. The ants will co-operate with their own destruction; marching neatly into the traps, in single file. It's sad, really.
