Mud Daubers In Your Vents?

A friend of ours was having a fluky sort of problem: His RV furnace wasn't quite up to par; didn't want to light, made some odd noises--the last of the odd noises more like a cannon shot. Kaboom! After ascertaining that various muscles in his body hadn't failed him at a critical and embarrassing time, he hustled out doors from whence the noise had come. Sure enough, on the ground around his furnace vent, the tell-tale remains of a mud-dauber nest. The poor creature had built her nest and lain precious eggs in Joe's furnace vent, only to be swiftly evicted.

First, a word about mud daubers: These solitary wasps gather mud, roll it into balls, and form small dirt nests. Into these small but cleverly constructed cells, a stung (and thoroughly stunned) insect is placed, along with a solitary egg. Mama mud dauber flies away, secure in her buggy knowledge that "junior" will have something to eat when hatched.

While this tear-jerking story from nature may cause some to reach for the tissues, the rest of us swear and curse the day that Mama found our RV. The common reaction--head off to RV MegaPart and pick up a set of "mud dauber screens, an essential companion to your RV furnace." Hold onto your bee-veils, fellow wasp warriors--"essential" ain't necessarily so.

RV furnaces and water heaters, like us, are air breathers. And like us, stick a little something extra over our nose (or vent) and you get what? A bit of an obstruction that can cause problems, particularly for RV appliances. Systems can operate in strange ways when not enough precious pneuma is available, and some RV technicians warn that obstructed windage can actually lead to premature appliance death. If you've priced out furnaces lately, you'll want yours to last a long time. Sticking on one of those so-called "essential" screens can actually cause more harm than good.

What's to do? When not using the rig, TAPE over the vent, and post a note over the furnace thermostat or water heater switch warning the user to remove the tape before firing up the appliance. When in use, make checking out appliance vents a regular part of your "walk around" routine. Worried about getting stung? If you spot a wasp nest, take a stick and remove it at night. We don't recommend shooting the nest with wasp killer--can you imagine what might happen if your wasp spray turned out to be flammable and your furnace "lit off" when you sallied forth with your can of "Bug Off!" Ah, the picture it presents.

Battle of the Ants

The popular children's song, The Ants Go Marching, begins a progression of a single ant marching through ten rather tedious verses, finally ending with the ants marching 10 by 10, and the little one proclaiming this is, "The End!"

Sadly, ants in the RV never go marching singly, and rarely by the 10s. We woke up one fine morning with an upset cat, doing her best imitation of a bird dog 'at point.' Her hissing target? A large, black, moving column of ants, working its way across the RV from a crack near the entry door, across the flooring, up the wall cabinet, and into the kitchen sink. Hundreds of the little boogers, all intent on carrying away whatever it is that struck their fancy.

Ants in the RV, like the proverbial ants in the pants, are nothing to laugh about. How do you get rid of them, and keep them gone? In our case, the first response to the attack (after cat and distaff set cleared the area) was a trip to the local hardware store. A high powered spray specifically designed for invading ants made fairly quick work of the invading forces. But how to keep them gone? Friends who were serving as Katrina relief volunteers in New Orleans quickly filled us in on the 'magic circle of Comet' trick used down there.

Ants are clever creatures--they send out scouts who scurry about the territory, looking for suitable food and water sources. If one crawls up your RV tire, water hose, power cable, et al, and eventually finds something inside your rig, he or she leaves a little smell trail of pheromones. Your proboscis won't pick up on it, but to the ants, it's an irresistible essence that must be followed--by hundreds of the scout's fellows. Why are these ants marching in a circle? Clever researchers took a dilute form of their pheromone and painted on the paper, then turned the ants loose. It's strong stuff--it's said that as little as .33 of a milligram of straight pheromone could leave a discernable trail around the entire circle of the earth!

For whatever reason, ants won't cross a line of bleach-containing scouring powder. Maybe it kills the pheromone trail, maybe it burns their little feet, we don't know. In any event, get out the Comet and shake a good border around everything of your rig that touches the ground: Tires, landing gear, stabilizers, cords, and hoses. This is better than spraying insecticide on these utilities, because the powdered cleanser will simply shake off, not stick to your hands, nor cause grief for pets and kids. Of course, if the rains fall you may need to renew your magic circle, but while the powder's out, the ants are gone.

Photos courtesy US Department of Agriculture