h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I were a lad, I had hours of fun in the garden by drowning ants in a dish of water. It was funny the way they struggled a bit and then stopped, floating on the surface. Nowadays, at work, I have improved on this by killing flies in different ways. So far, I have caught some in mid-flight, sprayed them with Jif or some other powerful cleaning spray, and smacking them when they land on a wall. The best method for this is to stand with your arm outstretched, palm at right-angles to your arm in the direction of the fly. Now bend your arm slowly at the elbow, and quickly straighten your arm again. The poor lickle fly won't have a chance unless you are too slow.
Another way is to stamp on them, but for this they must have landed on the floor, a very rare event, although I have managed to kill them in this way occasionally. Using dishcloths, wet or otherwise, doesn't work. Due to their floppy nature, they move too slowly. Speed is of the essence in fly killing.
Note: do not kill spiders. They're too cute, and they kill flies too. Treat them as your brother.

My version of this game was slightly more toxic. There was an ants nest in the dirt driveway of my parents house. We would gather as many different kinds of chemical as we could find- home drycleaning fluid, turps, metho, kero, fly spray, washing powder etc and mix them into a sort of blue chemical cocktail. This would be poured into the ants nest. We would then sit back and watch the poor little buggers struggle out of the hole covered in blue stuff. They stayed on their feet for a surprising length of time before carking it.

It was fun at the time but I don't think I'd be recommending it for kiddies in the future.

Although quite effective at the moment, this will eventually lead to race of superants, totally resistant to all forms of attack( they'll probably be blue. It may even end up with them ganging up to drown us. You can't kick natue without getting a punch in the nose back

The only way to drown an ant or spider is to strap it tightly to a firm piece of MUD with an elastic band and hurl it (underarm) to its watery end.

I used to try all kinds of ant-zapping methods: drowning 'em, dripping hot wax on 'em, torching 'em with a lighter (you end up with neat little ant statues that way, instead of limp noodles or smushed blobs )...and of course the chemical method. Bleach works really nicely.