Posted on 03/10/2020 6:53:10 PM PDT by nickcarraway
From what I’ve read the Imported Red Fire Ant species got to my hometown about the same time I did. And fire ants are not going to be gone from Baton Rouge or Bovina when I am.
Ants are just a fact of life and there is no simple surefire ant solution. However, there is such a thing as the Museum of Novel Fire Ant Control Methods and Products. I just can’t find out if it is a true physical facility or merely cyber located.
It is not definite as to what entity is its founder and curator, but I’m thinking folks at Texas A&M. Hopefully, some readers will Google it and read about the creative failed attempts to control fire ants. Several of the museum’s collection come with YouTube verification. Some devices were even patented or their name trademarked.
The McCoy Ant Stomper was a knee-high windmill first developed at Lubbock for another ant species but advertised for fire ants in the late 1970s. As the propeller turned it powered a tiny roller that was to run over worker ants as they emerged from the mound.
The Anster from the 1980s was a wheeled walk-behind gizmo powered by a lawnmower engine. A person pushed it and stopped it centered over an ant mound where its spinning tines ground up the mound.
The Queen Smasher came from Alabama. It was simply a square iron weight with a vertical rod and a crosspiece handle. The operator merely repeatedly beat down on a mound with the patent-applied-for smasher.
There have been numerous rigs created to pull behind a tractor or vehicle that inject steam into ant mounds, one mound at a time. I recall once years ago we let a guy demonstrate such an invention at the annual garden field day at Crystal Springs.
We had a lot of interested spectators follow his large propane tank on wheels mound destroyer, but everybody was told to stand back, way back.
Quite a few ant killer theories involved ways to inject liquid nitrogen into ant mounds, but nobody has come up with a cost-effective and safe way to make it work.
Be it steam or liquid nitrogen, I don’t think any method requiring pricy equipment and operators for hire is a go for front and back yards. Undetected new colonies would be tunneling below ground while the rig is being driven away down the street.
Both the YaardVark and the Electric Anteater claimed to electrocute fire ants.
For a renewable energy solution, there was the Solar Ant Charmer. And even though expensive plug-in devices that allegedly ran moles out of the yard by vibrations never worked, along came the $700 Electrocat designed to vibrate ants away from up to an acre.
One museum piece that evidently does work is the Ant-free Pet Bowl.
It is double-walled with the outside wall off the ground. Ants crawl up the inner wall and supposedly get frustrated with the U-turn at the top and just give up on dog food for today.
Terry Rector writes for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District.
Armadillos carry leprosy.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo
Armadillos are often used in the study of leprosy, since they, along with mangabey monkeys, rabbits, and mice (on their footpads), are among the few known species that can contract the disease systemically. They are particularly susceptible due to their unusually low body temperature, which is hospitable to the leprosy bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. (The leprosy bacterium is difficult to culture and armadillos have a body temperature of 34 °C (93 °F), similar to human skin.) [17] Humans can acquire a leprosy infection from armadillos by handling them or consuming armadillo meat.[18] Armadillos are a presumed vector and natural reservoir for the disease in Texas and Louisiana and Florida.[19][20] Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century, leprosy was unknown in the New World. Given that armadillos are native to the New World, at some point they must have acquired the disease from old-world humans.[18][20]
The armadillo is also a natural reservoir for Chagas disease.[21]
Not NEARLY as much fun as my gasoline fueled water pistol!
I take a can of Bengal, put the red straw in the mound, give it 2-3 sprays and poof. Dead ant hill.
I’ve used gasoline and bug spray. A neighbor used a shop vac and extension cord to get rid of ground hornets. He would sneak up in the night or morning and put the tube right by the hole in the ground, wait until daylight when they were flying in and out, and plug it in. He put a rag soaked in wasp killer in the chamber.
FReegards
Sprinkle dry Cream of Wheat on the mound. They take it into the mound and feed it to the queen and she explodes when it reacts with moisture.
What I learned from our honeymoon. About fire ants, and that there were armadillos in the south too. All the way up through TN.
I always figured that the spread of armadillos must be due to spread of FA.
Bring on the armies, before FA reach MD!
Casting a Fire Ant Mound With Molten Aluminum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xvsxarw-J0
And then you sell the cast as abstract artwork...
Bkmk Fire ant
Until The “Department of Homeland Security came about and got all draconian and paranoid about letting us peasants have useful stuff, there was a product called “Durham’s Red Ant Balls” that was cheap and worked great. They were Sodium or Potassium Cyanide, depending on which was cheapest when they were buying the raw materials for any given production run..
And rather than killing your grass... they were about the best fertilizer I ever saw: Everywhere I used them, within a couple of weeks, the grass was lush and grew about three times as fast as the stuff a little further away. (Although I’m not sure I’d want my cattle, sheep, goats etc. grazing on it.)
Years ago I cleared my central Florida house lot of FA using a product called “Fire Ant Extinguisher”. An aerosol can with a long plastic straw, you ran the straw down until it stopped, withdrew an inch, and discharged for a few seconds.
:(
(Tiny screen—continued from above)
‘Eliminated every mound with one can! Years later, one mound came back, but the product had disappeared from the shelves.
:(
Well, I don't live in Texas so I don't have to even THINK about them any more.
I haven’t heard WORD ONE about fire ants from my Texas friend. If they were still a problem I would have heard from her...or from her son and daughter-in-law.
Use of the match not necessary. Just pour on the gasoline. The hydrocarbon vapors, being heavier than air, sink down the tunnels and asphyxiate the little pustule-raising demons, including the queen. The small circle of grass will still die and regrow.
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