Carpenter ants are tough. They get into your foundation, fences, trees, etc. Getting rid of a whole colony is difficult. Baiting is usually best (we tried it all). Home remedies are placebos. The best solution we found for inside with the animals was to bait along the trail with Advance Carpenter Ant Bait (Whitmore Micro-Gen). I have a direct 800 number if you need it. It is TOXIC which is why it WORKS. Boric acid just doesn't seem to get the job done on big colonies of carpenter ants and fire ants. We had to make sure to put it where the cats would not get to it. But to be honest, my cats won't eat anything that is not in their special bowel (Each has their own. They don't eat out of each other's bowel either which makes it easy to see who's the pig of the duo. :thumbup: )