On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 08:55:11 GMT, Jack Glendening
wrote:

Mark Navarre wrote:
Ants are effective scavengers, and may in fact be consuming a rat or mouse
inside your tailboom that died there after eating your pitot, vario, or static
tubing. It might be better to leave the ants alone until they finish off
whatever is attracting them to the inside of your glider,

At this point I am more concerned with what _live_ ants might be doing
than with an already _dead_ rodent remaining in there, which I could live
with! What worries me is that the last time I was out there I tried
to wash off much of where they had been with the idea of erasing their
chemical tracks - yet the next day were again back in that hidden
hole, which would not seem like an easy thing to do. So I have begun
to wonder if the ants are coming from the outside in or whether there
is already some sort of colony _inside_ (since then they would find
that hole rather easily, from from the inside). My lack of detailed
knowledge of what ants can do and my imagination has produced a paranoia
level which wants those ants out _now_!

That seems entirely reasonable paranoia to me.

Some years back I met some fellow Landrover travellers in Goa who
warned me about the local army ants: two evenings later I spotted a
column headed for my back wheel and was able to nip the invasion in
the bud with a few kettles of boiling water, but I digress.

The other group had found ants living inside the box girders that form
their Landrover's chassis. They drove them from one end of the vehicle
to the other three times, using boiling water and insecticide and
completely stripping their stuff out each time, before they were able
to get rid of them.

Are you sure your ants are confined to your tail group and not getting
into the wheel box or under the seat pan?

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :