Ants create real-life horror story
Odd and scary when a friend was vacuuming a spider web from the corner of a living room wall and ceiling. She ran the hand-held vacuum over the wall and a large piece of paint came off. It was then that the horror ensued.
An enormous colony of odorous ants had been living inside the wall, eating completely through the insulation with only the paint providing a barrier. Once the hole was created they spilled out by the thousands. My friend desperately tried to stem the flow but the vacuum canister quickly filled with ants. She recalled reading somewhere that cinnamon immobilized and killed ants, so she dashed to the kitchen, where thankfully she had a large container of the spice. She threw cinnamon on the ants on the floor and in the wall, buying enough time to grab a shop vac to suck up more.
An exterminator was phoned and able to make an emergency house call. It's never a good thing when a pest control professional remarks that they've never seen anything quite like whatever is happening to you. Odorous house ants are opportunists, nesting both indoors and outdoors. Indoors they can nest in wall crevices, near water pipes, under carpets and floors or sometimes behind paneling, as they did in my friend's case. Each colony can contain at least one queen and more than 100,000 workers.
All is now well, the ants were exterminated and the wall repaired. The takeaway is to keep a good supply of cinnamon on hand. Before this weekend I had no idea that it would kill ants and neither did the exterminator.
'Tis the season for those who own RVs and travel trailers to put them to use. Last week the Post Falls Police Department posted a photo to its Facebook page of a man in an older white pickup truck who was cruising through neighborhoods taking pictures of homes with RVs and travel trailers. It's a good reminder that the bad guys could be looking to burglarize the vehicles or paying attention to when they're gone, which would signal a vacationing home owner.
As an FYI, in both Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene any vehicle, including RVs, can only remain parked on a city street for 24 hours. If you're going to be on vacation you can also contact either PD so they can make patrol officers aware that the homeowner is out of town.
On Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m. is Rally at the Alley (River City Lanes) to benefit longtime Post Falls day care provider Radel Miller, who's battling brain cancer. All proceeds will help her family with medical bills and expenses. Info: 660-2197 or young.heather93@gmail.com
Happy birthday today to Natalie Wyant, Lynsie Odd, Kirk Dady, Jessica Downs and Nikki Downs. Tomorrow Evelyn Bevacqua, Harold Appleby, Jr., Joel Semanko, Helen Elder, Dale Rounsville, Ron Hodge and JaNee Newby will celebrate.
On Friday the partiers will be DeDe Tondee, Don Wilhelm, Kim Normand and Wendy English. On June 7 my better half and best friend Bert along with Brad Corkill, Rick Alden, Susan Lewis and John Hough are blowing out the candles. On Sunday wish Tammy Rickard, Courtney Everson, Dustin Pilcher, Argonne Dotts, Jaymie Starr, Emma Hoffman, Dave Haugen and Ted Pryor a happy birthday.
Monday's birthday boy is Darrell Hull and on June 10 Chelsea Hough, Jared Mans, Taylor Gonzales, Lori Kaye Gaboury, Joan Crawford, Tanzi Hanson and Shannon Boston will be wearing their party hats.
Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. She was voted Best Local Writer for 2013 by the readers of the North Idaho Business Journal. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email mainstreet@cdapress.com. Follow her on Twitter #kerrithoreson.