Pickled cinnamon...

Me, in my kitchen, a couple of nights ago.  I was debating whether I should bake a cookie or just eat the dough raw (satya, baby), and noticed a team of ants carrying a bit of rice noodle across the counter. Totally had a cute moment.  Oh, yeah, I thought they were cute.  I watched them while I munched on my raw cookie dough and had some tea.  When they struggled to get the thing up a wall and over to an opening, *I helped*.  Fashioning a little elevator platform out of a piece of paper, I coaxed them into walking on it and lifted them right up to where they were trying to go.  And then I noticed the others.

There were a lot of others.  I asked my friend, Google, for advice as to how to get rid of the ants and turned up garlic and black pepper.  I sat garlic cloves around, and then (oh, man) broke out the pepper grinder and went to town in a spot on the counter to see what would happen.  And would you like to know what happened?  One of the ants walked over, picked up a chunk of it, and started walking off.  Pepper, at least freshly ground, does not deter ants.  Garlic?  Works.  They will walk up to it, stand on their hind legs and look at it, and then wander off like they're bored.  But I wanted something stronger.  

I posted my issue on Facebook, and got cinnamon as the solution.  And that.  Shit.  Works.  Seriously - sprinkle cinnamon in the vicinity of an ant, and he will haul ass.  Sprinkled near a posse, it's like one of them broke explosive wind and they're all running away - just madness.  I became the cinnamon fairy and rocked it all over the kitchen.  And the ants fled the cinnamon fairy, and all was well in the land.  

And then I had to clean it up.  I make my own cleaning stuff - and use a glass cleaner that contains vinegar to clean the kitchen counters.  Well, I do that when I run out of the all purpose stuff that doesn't contain vinegar - - anyway, just know that I had to use the stuff with the vinegar in it.  I don't recommend spraying vinegar anything on cinnamon.  There's a reaction.  A strong one.  My kitchen smells like pickled cinnamon - NOTHING will get rid of the smell.  Not even the especially potent cedar incense that makes my house smell like mostly like campfire.  I haven't tried smudging, but I'm close.  Honestly, I'm not sure even setting sulfur ablaze would help.  Anything that's sprayed, burned, or otherwise applied to mask the smell wears off and I'm left with pickled cinnamon.  

At the top of today's list:  Reorganize kitchen.  I'm replacing it with:  Buy cinnamon STICKS.