Posted on 05/30/2018 11:20:28 AM PDT by bgill
I’m a recent relo to Georgia from Ohio. Wow did I ever get a rude first meeting with fire ants!
Coming from a farming background I am stunned at the lack of fire ant control I see in pasture ground here. That’s got be bad news for livestock.
There was a 1950s movie about giant ants called “Them” starring James Whitmore. I was fairly well done for the time.
Oh.
I thought they were going after the older LGBLT community that surrunds the Capitol building in a fit of ageism.
Clearly you’ve never dealt with fire ants.
Nothing kills fire ants. Treating one mound will only make them move and divide into a half dozen new mounds.
A small nuclear device will get rid of them. Preferably delivered from low orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I don’t know about that...really I don’t know. I have read where large tract treatment can be done successfully, but at what cost?
Yes, you treat one or more mounds, and the SOBs pop up ten feet away with a new mound. Seems like that is more apt to happen after a rain.
At best all I’ve done is suppress their activity to some extent. I have a pic of my foot where the damned things got on me last summer. Red blisters and pustules everywhere. Nice imported pest we have here. I was surprised to learn that fire ants in the south are a relatively recent problem...1954 or something?
We don’t have them around here. Fortunately.,
The most aggressive animal on earth is the lowly fire ant. The time from initial contact to biting/stinging( I think they do both) is .1 milliseconds. They work in groups of hundreds/thousands. Even the teeny tiny ity-bity ones are vicious.
Used to see dead lizards on the sidewalk in the morning and come back in the afternoon to find it a stripped skeleton with a line of fire ants hauling it away bit by bit.
The Naked Jungle was a good ant movie.
You only rent the land from the fire ants in Texas.
You learn about fire ants real quick when you’re a kid and try to blow up the mounds with firecrackers.
Bee got in my sandal last summer, stung me, I’m mildly allergic to them, foot started swelling and lost some feeling, THEN managed to stand on fire ant mound and got bit many times before I noticed them, foot then was so swollen I could not wear a shoe on it the next day. Might have been some alcohol involved.
That Al K. Hall guy seems to be omnipresent when things go screwy.
LOL! You got that right!
Tried broadcasting ant poison once...worked great for about 5 months.
Soak the mound with lighter fluid, torch. For each mound that appears. I’ve had success with that method. Plus it’s fun to hear them pop when burning.
I found the best way to control them is spraying liberal doses of termite mixture from time to time....may not make the “don’t poison Mother Earth” folks happy but it is effective...also works to deter Carpenter Bees from boring into my woodwork.....lots of my woodwork is now toxic and vermin-free....
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