Those things are nasty. My wife and I were vacationing in Galveston, and we played golf one day. I didn’t know about fire ants, and as I often do, I hit my ball off the fairway and into some bush. I had to push into the bush to hit the ball, so I did, backing up against a mound of dirt.
Well, that mound of dirt was of course a fire ant hill. Needless to say, I did not hit my ball. I did spray a good deal of bug repellant on my legs. And nursed quite a few bites. Ouch.
Thanks for the informative post - puts a bit of perspective on some of the borderline-hysteria comments. We surely have enough real issues and problems related to this field and many others, without creating more imaginary ones, and jumping on every half-cocked media report like a bunch of DUmmies.