Ants in the woodpile

[DiscoInferno]

yeah, when spliting that softmaple, it was like a stampede away from the wood when we split it..carrying eggs and hitailing it..

That's how my recent oak splitting went: about every other of the smaller logs was full of ants and eggs. They'd drop out, run off, and rendezvous somewhere else in the pile of logs/bark/sawdust. I'd leave the ant splits out until I saw no more activity before stacking. When I finished splitting the whole pile a whole lot of ants were still milling around in the pile of bark and sawdust, so I just shoveled it into a wheelbarrow and dumped it over the retaining wall behind our house. I was splitting in the driveway not far from the house, so I certainly do hope none of them headed that way. Our house perimeter (ground) was treated with termidor a couple of years ago because of termites, not sure that will do any good against ants now. My experience was that Terminex charges 3x what an independent guy does, call around and you can find someone that uses termidor.

I have seen a house that was completely infested with carpenter ants, it was an old and essentially abandoned house on Grand Island, in Lake Superior. The park service had been treating it, and all the floors were covered in dead ants. Pretty gross.

 

[detmurds]

Just wanted to add that being in a cold winter area will keep ants at bay until you bring it in and throw it in the fire. But don't store too much indoors or they will wake up.