This is how I feel whenever I’ve used Terro in the past lol. I think ants are actually pretty cute, and they work hard and have this close little working family. You can see them appear in human terms to “get excited” at a big find- “sister, sister! I found something great come see!” Each one diligently working, perhaps trekking the equivalent of a hundred miles just to get to the mother-load. Then they take as much as they can home to feed the waiting babies. Trip after trip, and if you watch them you see them start to get slower, less organized, they seem to stumble and veer or lose track of their thoughts. Weaker and weaker as the poison works its arts and they grow hungrier and hungrier the more food they take.
And then I start to think- their brains are so small- they are “simple organisms” right? They don’t process or think or feel in the terms we do or the levels we do- practically biological machines running on instinct?
Sometimes they die on the trail, or you might squish one. Often others come across the body, they sometimes stop and poke around as if to try and see if their sister can be woken up, or they may stop to seemingly mourn. Then quite often one or two will come and carry the body off. Many ants make “graveyards” of sorts- but many also just eat the dead. Well- isn’t that evidence of their primitive and unfeeling nature? But…. What if some giant alien of infinite complexity was watching us? Perhaps man has found our way into space and reached some new corner of space. We find water and resources, at first we just mine it and bring it home, but if there is enough and the environment is hospitable enough we might establish a small colony and grow it out. And then…. What if these aliens looked at us and our society seemed so simple and mechanical, these humans are such primitive organisms and their actions are all based on eating and reproducing and acquiring territory. They don’t think…
.. or feel like us higher alien beings. There are so many and they reproduce so fast, their lives are so short compared to the centuries we aliens live- their lives are worthless. They are pests…
And well…. I’m not too keen on killing anything but it bothers me to kill ants. I do it anyway- perhaps evidence of our primitive and mechanical nature. Does it matter that most of the time they aren’t bothering me? They take crumbs I drop or eat grease and such from cracks in the stove or drops of water from the faucet or left around the sink, or they just want a place that isn’t as hot or cold as outside? Sometimes they aren’t even there for you- they are just exploring or passing through on the way to their targeted haul. But… they are pests. They are in my space. They might bring other insects that prey on ants or creatures that prey on them and then your home becomes an ecosystem of creatures. They may invest your walls and create a massive colony and crawl into your electronics and die
So they get killed because they might cause a problem or might get into something that I’d actually mind then in or because it is just “icky” or offensive to have them there. I grew up in the country quite a bit and my father was a country boy and all I can say as is often the case in rural living-I don’t know if it is right or not but it is the way it is.
I do really wish that some scientist would crack the code of ant pheromones or something so we could invent some sort of system to define boundaries or something in a way they could understand they should avoid a place like a home. I know there are various repellents (repel ants ha ha) but most don’t work well or aren’t always practical etc. but indeed, I’ve found terro works very well overall if you don’t have extreme ant issues.
And then I start to think- their brains are so small- they are “simple organisms” right? They don’t process or think or feel in the terms we do or the levels we do- practically biological machines running on instinct?
And well…. I’m not too keen on killing anything but it bothers me to kill ants. I do it anyway- perhaps evidence of our primitive and mechanical nature. Does it matter that most of the time they aren’t bothering me? They take crumbs I drop or eat grease and such from cracks in the stove or drops of water from the faucet or left around the sink, or they just want a place that isn’t as hot or cold as outside? Sometimes they aren’t even there for you- they are just exploring or passing through on the way to their targeted haul. But… they are pests. They are in my space. They might bring other insects that prey on ants or creatures that prey on them and then your home becomes an ecosystem of creatures. They may invest your walls and create a massive colony and crawl into your electronics and die
I do really wish that some scientist would crack the code of ant pheromones or something so we could invent some sort of system to define boundaries or something in a way they could understand they should avoid a place like a home. I know there are various repellents (repel ants ha ha) but most don’t work well or aren’t always practical etc. but indeed, I’ve found terro works very well overall if you don’t have extreme ant issues.