Are we not all frustrated with having ants marching around the house as if it were their own? With these insects around, we can never let our guard down. The ants send out patrollers to scan for any source of food, so if you leave any food exposed on the dining table unprotected, you might as well say goodbye to it.
But there are some people who put new meaning into what the presence of these ants means. They really do not mind having ants in the house, and in fact, welcome them. They actually believe that the ants give them signs about the things to come in the future, be it positive or negative events. According to Jyotish Sastra, meaning knowledge of the future, ants are associated with either good luck or bad luck. Whether you believe in omens or not, it may be interesting to find out what the presence of ants in the house means.
Let us see what is in store for us with the help of these ants. Remember, this is just for fun, and you may or may not believe this.
When Do Ants Bring Good Luck? Bad luck?
Black ants marching around your home means there will be a rise in material wealth for you. If they happen to come out from a rice box, the money will come to you. If there are ants in places where you keep your gold jewelry, that means gold items will come your way.
Observe from which direction the ants are coming from. If they come from the north, it means happiness. If they are coming from the south, then you will most likely see a profitable future. Ants coming from the east means you might be hearing some bad news soon. If they are coming from the west, you might be traveling to another country in the future.
Red ants, on the other hand, are mostly associated with bad luck. Their presence in the house means loss of wealth. There is one exception though. If you see them with their eggs in their mouths, then you can breathe easy. It is actually a good sign.
What About Ants In A Dream?
Have you ever dreamt of ants? Ants may be a boring subject for a dream, but these insects symbolize many positive virtues, among them is teamwork, hard work, perseverance, great communication, diligence, and productivity. Therefore dreaming of ants may be related to your work situation. Dreaming of them might also reveal your qualities.
Some dream interpretation experts also believe that this symbolizes cooperation; it might also represent your relationship with your colleagues.
If you dream about ants in your food, it represents disgust. Nobody really wants to eat food that has been crawled on all over by ants. Putting things on a business perspective, this dream means you are unfulfilled or dissatisfied with the way your business is going. To some dream interpreters, it means a competitor is trying to put your business out of contention.
What does it mean if you have dreamt of eating ants? It depends on who is interpreting it for you. It may mean that you have the desire to lessen your workload in the office. Or it might mean that you are losing friends because of your own fault. Maybe your dream is telling you to improve your communication with your friends and loved ones.
If you have dreamt about ants biting you, it denotes an error on something you are working on. If your dream is about one that ants are crawling all over you, it means that some people around you are trying to take advantage of you. Definitely a negative sign. If you dream of this, you may want to take stock of the friends you have and see who is real and who is not.
Again, I put these interpretations out here just for their entertainment value. It is really up to you if you want to believe these interpretations, as long as you do not overdo them. Others would take this with a grain of salt.
What does it really mean to have ants in the house? This time, let us dig into this matter and let us base it on several scientific studies.
When You See Ants
Ants are always outdoor creatures. We usually see them outside the house because they actually thrive there. The problem starts when they get too close to human dwellings. All their lives, ants really only care about 2 things: food and water. When they run out of food supply outdoors, they are most likely to look for a new source of food inside houses or buildings. Check for any internal food source that might have gotten inside. Who knows, you might have some dead rodents or dead insects around the house and these might have brought the ants inside too. There might be some trash lying around that you did not notice; or bird feeders. Simply put, something must have led these ants inside your house, and that you must find out what that is.
Seeing ants inside the house also means that there is something that needed to be fixed around your home. It may come in the form of a leaking pipe, or damaged weather stripping, or that there are holes or cracks that need to be fixed. Worse is if you have wood that is damaged by water or wood rot. Carpenter ants are attracted to wood rot. Once the carpenter ants find this, they would inflict more damage to your structural wood. It is worth noting that carpenter ants are capable of doing more damage to structures than termites could.
According to the triangle exterminator near your home, if you see a single ant wandering around your home, usually on tabletops searching for food, do not be deceived. That solitary and you are seeing has more than a hundred, if not thousands of fellow wants nearby. This is because ants live in a colony.
The Makeup Of The Ant Colony
Ants never live alone. They have a tight social structure, and all of them live in a nest. An ant is fully committed to the survival of the colony and is given certain tasks. The life of the colony is much more important than the lives of each ant individually, thus there are recorded cases wherein the ants sacrifice themselves for the colony.
A colony is led by a queen. The queen’s mission is to lay as many eggs as she can. Some can lay millions in their lifetime. Initially, the queen has wings, then sheds these wings when they start a new colony. A colony may have one or more queens, depending on the species of ants. A queen can live for years. A colony can survive for only a few months without its queen. No one else is capable of laying eggs because the rest of the female ants - the worker ants - are sterile.
The male ants do nothing other than mate with the queen. Their only mission in life is to be the fathers of the future of the colony.
The worker ants are sterile female ants. None of them are males. Physically, they are smaller than the queen, but aside from that, they are similar. These worker ants are the ones we usually see marching around the house looking for food. Their roles include foraging for food, feeding the colony, keeping the nest tidy, protecting the colony, caring for the newly hatched ants, protect the nest, and even attack other colonies to get food and eggs of the other ant colonies. These eggs will be kept and waited on to be hatched. Once these captured ants hatch, they will eventually become slave ants for the colony.
The colonies can last as long as there are queens. Once the queen dies, the colony would die soon after. Some colonies have queens in waiting, and this new queen would step up when the old queen dies. Some colonies can last for years, while others can last for decades. Sometimes, a colony can stay in just one place the whole time; but when they feel threatened, or when they can longer find any more food source in the area, they relocate somewhere else that is safe and where there is abundant food.
We want to see these ant colonies outdoors, not inside the house, where they can be considered pests. So what can we do if we have these pests? Just simply practice good housekeeping. Regularly dispose of your trash. Remove food particles and drink spills on the dining table, on the kitchen sinks, tabletops, coffee tables, etc. Store food in sealed containers. Seal cracks and crevices.
If you have these unwanted pests in your house, be sure to contact the best ant control experts in North Carolina, Go-Forth Home Services. At Go-Forth Home Services, we have professional technicians who will examine your home and your lawn to evaluate your individual needs, so you can have a happy, pest-free home.