No such thing as just one ant

It started, as these things often do, with a single, manageable problem.

Ants.

For years we’ve fed our dog Sid outside without incident. Then, suddenly, his dinner began sending what can only be described as smoke signals. Within minutes, an area previously declared ant-free was a seething black mass.

Someone suggested putting his bowl in water to make a moat, because ants can’t swim.

Want to bet?

Our pooch is elderly and entirely uninterested in engineering solutions. He nudges his bowl around like a person rearranging furniture. The ants, while perhaps not strong swimmers, proved to be excellent problem-solvers, forming what looked suspiciously like a tiny living bridge across a two-millimetre gap.

At this point, we were still in what I now recognise as the blissful early stages. That problem you look back on wishing times were once again that simple.

Then the ants came inside.

They appeared in the pantry, trooping across the kitchen bench, and anywhere a molecule of sugar had once passed through. A faint whiff of cordial beneath a tightly sealed lid? Like seagulls to hot chips. Anything remotely sweet has now been relocated to the fridge, where the honey has set into something resembling construction-grade adhesive.

Hot on their heels came the fruit flies.

At first, just a couple. Harmless. Decorative, even. Then, overnight, a hovering cloud established itself over the sink like a blizzard. Removing fruit, scrubbing surfaces, and deploying a level of hygiene previously unseen in this household achieved precisely nothing.

And then, because clearly we hadn’t suffered enough, came the flies.

Not the occasional visitor drifting through an open door. Dozens. The flyscreens became peppered with black specks. It was early autumn. Where were they coming from? A creeping paranoia set in. Had the house itself become a breeding ground? Were we, at any moment, going to be forced into dismantling the plumbing in a desperate search for the source?

The fruit flies, it turns out, were courtesy of a late hot snap, nicely aligning the rapid liquefying bananas with their rapid breeding cycle. Each female lays hundreds of eggs. Which feels excessive, not to mention unnecessary (what is the purpose of the fruit fly anyway?)

While dealing with this airborne situation, I made the fatal error of clearing out the pantry and a moth floated out.

A pantry moth.

We haven’t had pantry moths in over a decade. I can only assume they intercepted some sort of internal memo sent by the ants and decided conditions were favourable.

Meanwhile, Sid’s food - ground zero for this entire saga - has begun attracting birdlife. Magpies and mynas now drop in daily, help themselves generously, and then redecorate the outdoor furniture accordingly.

And, naturally, we have guests arriving. By which I mean human (invited) ones.

The house now resembles a low-budget science experiment. Multiple homemade fruit fly traps (jam jars, cling wrap, apple cider vinegar, detergent) are deployed throughout, monitored with manic zeal by yours truly via continual checks and captive counts.

Pantry moth traps hang with grim efficiency. Fly swatters are stationed within arm’s reach. Large silver owl deterrents tinkle ominously and vexatiously in the garden.

It felt, briefly, like we were winning.

Until I spotted a few ants near the fireplace.

Then a couple in a cupboard. Then more in another. Odd, but manageable.

The last cupboard housed some old laptops and an electronic photo frame. Warm. Enclosed. Full of inviting little crevices.

The cupboard walls were no longer cream. They were teeming black with ants. Both laptops were filled with bazillions of them, along with what I can only assume were eggs. It wasn’t a passing-through situation. It was the Death Star, sending out its fighter ships.

Our guests are due any minute and the pest situation is in open warfare. We remain vulnerable but vigilant.

Because the lesson remains: there is no such thing as just one ant. There’s the one you see, and the several thousand you haven’t found yet, putting down roots in your appliances.

So if you happen to spot a lone ant near your television, don’t ignore it. Do as we do, and alert any guests to stand ready.

Because a lone ant is not passing through.

It’s inspecting the property.