Ants: Again and Adios

A hour after mop-up and they're
still searching for the elixer.

My probing wife has come to a dead end trying to determine how quickly ants can deteriorate different foodstuffs. The experiment, its beginning described here, had been inconclusive anyway, even before they suddenly invaded en masse.

This last event was the result of another kitchen quest, this time to create a herbal cure for secretion-related ailments so severe, my plain-spoken wife swears, her snot has been sticky enough to epoxy a boat. 

You can see the marine influence speaking.

Anyway, the active ingredient in this medicinal concoction is ginger, but the main ingredient is sugar. She cut up the former, added a lot of the latter, and water, and boiled.

The ginger syrup, now in ant-free zone

I think her result proved conclusively that ants are summoned by smell, especially that of azucar. She'd only had her mixture boiling for minutes when the multitude began to gather, like she was a goddess in some primitive ant ritual, and they were swarming acolytes.

I wasn’t there but she said it got scary.

So, we’re off ants, at least for the time being. 

My misgivings about her initial experiment, I believe, were well founded, and, anyway, its results, for various technical reasons, were inconclusive, except for the smell thing.