ANT-EATER WANTED
A tale of untimely ants comes from a London reader who writes. 'On a September Friday afternoon at 4.45 last year, I entered our front downstairs room to find the curtains, windows and carpets covered with ants. I shut the windows and had a fearsome time dealing with them, only to return ten minutes later to fine. the place covered again! Eventually we found they were coming up through the floor- boards. round the edge of the carpet and into the room. When my husband came in I left him to continue the battle, which he waged until 9 p.m.! Believe it or not, the very next day about the same time, tip they came again. You can imagine with what trepidation I awaited 4.45 p.m. on the Sunday when nothing happened. Nor for another year when. on Thursday afternoon, September 13 last, up they came again—all over everywhere. "Brief and infrequent," I will grant you, but oh. so unpleasant and, to me, terrifying when they come at you inside the house. Our final weapons were paraffin and borax. If you should know of anything more effective—or of something to prevent their coining up in the first place—I should be grateful to hear it.' Sympathy is a poor thing to offer in face of a plague, but I have written to the lady con- cerned. I failed once to find a mongoose for a reader who wanted to hunt grey squirrels from the roof of her large house and hardly dare hope that there is a chance of my contacting someone with a tame ant-eater?
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