The seagull thing might be a myth.

More on ant control: Wipe down the little paths they take from their hidey-holes to food sources with watered-down bleach. This eliminates the pheromone trails they navigate with. I did this last summer, and it worked like a charm. They had laid out a path from an entry under the stove to my garbage pail, where I'd foolishly left a scrap of odiferous salmon skin. The path was a virtual four-lane highway of ants. I vacuumed up the ants, then scrubbed the trail.

The only paths I didn't eliminate were the ones leading to the bait-traps.