Ant Control: Compassionate Ways of Dealing with Ants

So, you’ve decided to walk more lightly on the Earth.  You buy organic fruits and vegetables.  You’ve rid your home of toxic cleaning products.  Heck, maybe you even drive a hybrid!  Some of you gradually went vegetarian or vegan, and now it really bothers you to think of killing anything.

Except ants! 

What happens when they invade your pristine eco-home?  What happens when you don’t want to kill them, but you also want to avoid “protecting” your home with poisonous pesticides?  I’ve faced this very same dilemma, especially when moving to properties left vacant for awhile.  Through experimentation, animal communication and sheer luck, I’ve discovered a few helpful hints:

What Doesn’t Work

When my now-husband lived on Vashon Island near Seattle, he got one of those sonic “rat deterrants.”  Practically everyone on that island has rats, and we didn’t want to kill them.  This plug-in device would supposedly encourage them to live elsewhere because the sound interrupted their enjoyment of our inner walls.  It worked great … for getting rid of rats.  Unfortunately, the sound or electrical current also drove all the carpenter ants out of the walls and into his kitchen and living room!

These were no ordinary ants, either.  They knew how to camouflage themselves, lining up along carpet patterns and linoleum seams.  They could mimic shadows and create their own tile designs.  I still had remnants of my brain injury and chasing those little guys around was somewhat maddening.  I didn’t want to kill them, but even if I had, they were big ants, with thick segments- – not exactly easy to squash. 

We looked online for non-toxic, compassionate ways to deter ants.  Several sites suggested spraying a mixture of lavender and peppermint essential oils in water.  I did this religiously, all over his counters, along cracks in the floors, over door thresholds.  Imagine my horror when the next morning I found not just six or seven aunts creeping along the counters and floors, but dozens to hundreds of black, crunchy beasties eagerly gobbling up their repellant.  They loved  it! 

Peppermint and lavender do NOT repel ants.  I have tried this on numerous occasions, always with the same result.  Adding peppermint and lavender to countertops invites ants to have a party, not depart.

Eventually, my husband and I decided to go the “old fashioned route” of sending telepathic messages to the ants to leave.  It took a great deal of concentration to get the attention of so many of them, and we temporarily needed to unplug our rat repellant.  Eventually, the queen revealed herself and we “relocated” her to a giant woodpile.  The ants followed their leader.  Anytime I used peppermint or lavender, though, a few of them wandered back in for a sniff!

What attracts ants

Most people know not to leave food particles around, lest ants invade the kitchen, but some things attract them more than others:

sugar

coconut oil

peppermint

lavender

water

Yes, water.  Many times when ants invade your home, they seek water rather than food.  I have occasionally seen ants crawling all over my Brita trying to find the entrance to its little reservoir.  Even if I have crumbs messing up the counter, these ants don’t care about the food; it’s liquid they want. 

Ants are also highly sensitive to energy vibrations.  When we lived at Lake Tahoe, we had no ant problem except during my daily yoga routine.  The moment I unfurled my mat and put on a yoga DVD, these large, high desert ants marched out to join me.  They surrounded me like my own miniature class, and no, I’m not making this up!  When I finished practicing yoga, they would retreat until the following afternoon’s asanas.  I even noticed that they liked some DVD’s better than others.  Yoga for Beauty seemed like a particular favorite, judging by their numbers.  It felt a bit difficult to do my pranayama (breathing) and suvasana (corpse pose) with all those ants around me, but they never bit me.  Apparently, they just liked the yoga vibe. 

Ants often appear when your money luck is changing.  Perhaps because they work so hard, or because they can carry ten to twenty times their body weight, or maybe because there are just so darned many of them, ants often represent abundance.  If your intuition tells you that your financial struggles will soon end, consider ants a friendly acknowledgment from the universe.

If, on the other hand, you have felt precarious in your good fortune and feel like it could crumble beneath you, pay attention to the behavior of your ants.  Do they just hang around in small numbers like little reminders, or do you see them invading you in droves?  Have they stung you?  Are they eating your foundation (literally)?  These sorts of encounters often serve as warnings.  Check your finances and investments.  The ants might actually save you a great deal of stress.

How to get them to leave

In the event that ants have arrived to give you a message, the sooner you receive that message, the sooner they can move on to someplace else.  Consider some of the qualities of ants and ask yourself how those might relate to current questions or concerns in your life. 

If you just want them to leave and really don’t care about their message, then concentrate on the following word-image, “This is not a safe place for you.”  Hold that feeling and then imagine the slaughter of ants that would occur if you still used Raid.  “This is not a safe place for you.  This is not the right location for your home.  Thank you for visiting, but this is not a safe place for you.  I don’t want to kill you, but if you stay, you will leave me no choice.  This is not a safe place for you.” 

If you do kill some of the ants, make sure you continue holding these thoughts strongly and repeatedly in your mind as you do so.  Eventually, the ant scouts will carry away the dead ants and bring “word” to their queen and the other worker ants to go somewhere else.  If you hold these thoughts strongly in your mind, you will need to kill far fewer of them before they understand your boundaries.

 

 

Laura Bruno is a Life Coach, Animal Communicator, Medical Intuitive and Reiki Master Teacher. In addition to private coaching and intuitive sessions, she teaches Conscious Eating 101 classes, Intuition workshops and Reiki Certification classes around the US. For more information on classes, animal communication, raw food coaching, transitional coaching, and letting your gifts shine through your career, please see: http://www.internationalrenaissancecoaching.com or call 775-750-9140.