It's possible to deescalate interspecies competition . . . well, somewhat.

Others' situation(s) may well be different and not amenable to Psych-Warfare; attitudes also at variance to my general one re the fauna I live amidst (from increasingly docile=unscared lizards on up to deer-size, feeding on the Thompson grapes which I eschew anyway). I figure ants and most other critters are OK. Outside. I also transport-out spiders of a certain size via water glass + cardboard.
One need not be a Jain to practice ahimsa within the World of Duality/Illusion, ya know?

Have made a habit of keeping my wet garbage on the (small) back porch, using an ex-milk container for collection, inside. ie No inside can to make a Chemical-perimeter around.
(Sorta-rural area, but now trying to be genteelized; that also being Resisted, fortunately. I'm just outside of 'The Village' No, not THAT The Village.

I made a deal, from the first:
> ANTS! you may merrily make trails to the container at bottom step of the porch. Period.<

Needed to plagiarize a bit of Harry Potter's snaketalk, you see. (Is it less cruel to squash a spider - trying to eat your flies, even - than to kick a friendly dog?)

In first couple of years, ~ this time would see scouts around sink, or elsewhere if I'd sloppily left anything edible on floor, even - an occasional trail. (I may not blame the ants for my enticements, whether through sloppiness or inadvertence).

The scouts were methodically munged. When there were several, and an entrace port showed a potential/growing? trail: I would array the dead-parrots near that entrance - with a ring of bicarb + talc, circumscribing general area.
> Tell Your Leader about the Casualties! <

(Later on.. plugging any small hole it was easy to plug, natch).
But you can't disembowel kitchen cabinets; there's a basement here, too etc.

IIRC - by second year; fershure by third:
there were usually quite-a-few daily at the official lunch counter. And rarely, a scout or two inside - always are there Privates who don't understand the General's strategy, and are working on their MBA to next work for that Annihilation Contractor. Of course, too - on garbage day, chances were high that a %significant working-part of the colony might end up in the landfill, after pickup. But I've not made it a Point to willy-nilly try to bag as many as possible - what for? YAN IQ contest?

Anyway.. far too far a return trek, for a stirring Lassie Come Home maudlin sequel, to be filmed with appropriate amateur shakiness and starring a suitable airhead as the bikini-clad Victim of The ANTZ-IV and Woody Allen as a stubborn scout..


Point: ever since = so long I can't recall any recent active duel - No Ants in the house. I think.. just possibly, the [tote garbage + ants] effect may even have depleted, deleted? one or another competing clan HQ, as - even in season, the feeding area has never been but a fraction of the initial walk-in business.


Besides..
The 'ant' you Save - just may have been an Indra in a parallel universe, since.. Vanity.. Vanity.. All IS Vanity....

I've long deemed it inevitable that 'Something would break-out' of our millions of linear-think Mondo-chemical encirclements. Seems inescapable, given the populations' general bio-insouciance re all critters including homo-sap (and not to mention the menageries from paramecia upwards).

Couldn't guess even which Kingdom would be The One, let alone phylum or class -- since homo-sap, all by itself, is each other's almost-Worst enemy -- merely via embracing the standard sophomoric Power-game scheme; loved by the superstitious masses - beloved of legions of their unimaginative handlers.

Since killer-bees don't seem to have gotten much attention as they progress, looks like Yellow Submarine nailed it, yet again -

When the panicked Chief Blue Meanie was casting about for an escape plan from the onrushing Music-nuclear Forces of Sgt. Pepper.. his Blue-sidekick responded,

Argentina?