Posted on 05/20/2013 5:39:08 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Invasive fire ants have been a thorn in the sides of Southerners for years. But another invasive species, the so-called "crazy" ant that many describe as being worse has arrived and is displacing fire ants in several places.
"When you talk to folks who live in the invaded areas, they tell you they want their fire ants back," said Edward LeBrun, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, in a statement from the school. "Fire ants are in many ways very polite. They live in your yard. They form mounds and stay there, and they only interact with you if you step on their mound."
Crazy ants, on the other hand, "go everywhere," invading homes and nesting in walls and crawlspaces, even damaging electrical equipment by swarming inside appliances.
A study published in the April issue of the journal Biological Invasions found that in areas infested with crazy ants ,few to no fire ants were present.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Lucky!! I'm not even first understudy here. I've been trying for years but there is just too much raw talent in my clan.
Ivy League Fungus was almost certainly biological warfare of Soviet or NAZI origin.
They appear to be the ant equivalent of liberals....infesting every orifice of your life. Fire ants, on the other hand, appear to behave more like conservatives. They build their homes, and won't mess with you unless you try to step on them.
'Tis a rare thing indeed, where the original post itself is the Post Of The Thread!
In south Florida, I get fire-ant "bit" about every week. The smaller native fire-ants are bad enough, but an attack from the invasive fire-ant species will leave my feet pained and totally numb!
:(
Welcome to the club. Here in Florida about 75% of the kids under 12 have little polka-dot scars on their legs and feet from fire ant bites. Sometimes those scars take months to fade away.
To be fair, Oklahoma is the reason Texas doesn’t float off into the Gulf. . . why?. . .because Oklahoma sucks.
;-)
There’s a common garden plant called “impatiens” - the domestic version of the taller native jewelweed- that everyone near fire ant country should keep in various places around their yard and in hanging baskets about their patio or deck.
If you get bit or stung by anything, just grab a tablespoon or so of the leaves, flowers and fleshy stems of this plant and crush them, smearing them on the injury. For fire ant stings it is instant pain relief and usually no welt will form, and there won’t be itching afterwards. For spider bites and scorpion stings it takes a few seconds longer but it works faster than anything sold in stores and is easy to grow.
The native version, jewelweed, has yellow or orange bugle-shaped flowers very attractive to hummingbirds, who will often stake out and defend patches of this plant, conducting epic miniature battles for possession of it, up and down the banks of creeks. It grows in the midwest in the same places as poison ivy is often found- near water- and is very effective at preventing poison ivy reactions and in easing reactions that have already occured.
Probably just sugar ants. Get some borax, corn syrup and a little water. Mix it to form a thin syrup, put it on a bit of waxed paper [where kids, cats and dogs can’t get to it] and set it in the line of march - the ants will soon swarm it, drink it and carry it back to the queen and feed her with it, and the whole colony dies. Cheap and effective.
I thought so.
Thanks for the heads up. I like your idea, or maybe they could just bite those giant pythons to death!! It’s really getting to be Wild Kingdom here in Florida.
I’ve been wondering, are there any ants that survive in Antarctica?
Beats your...... what??? Lots of things you Okies could be “beating”.... on a daily basis.
Actually, I like Okies. They almost made it to the Promise Land.
Far as beating, I sure as hell don’t think of UT as my team and it looks like the winning at the annual game at the Dallas fair is about even.
I resent that statement...just dont give ‘em any of our “coffee”...lol
You guys are up north, but didn’t know yall had Tim Horton’s.
Have you considered spraying the property line?
Is that also how we got this terrible infestation of lawyers?
All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them.
Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it.
If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we’d be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.”
— H.L. Mencken
...on your land without your permission and bite you when you attempt to get rid of them.........Sorry, but they're liberals too.......
You've probably seen them on TV Nat Geo documentaries but when you happen upon them in real life, and you are one step away from stepping into the middle of them, your life and your view of ants will change completely.......
There's only two things I don't leave home without, my wallet and a can of RAID.......
But, I suspect we've got crazy ants. This past summer at my office, I noticed the wildest collection of anthills on the lawn, all around some electrical equipment mounted on a concrete pad beside the building. It was an ant city, really, with skyscrapers. They kept building hills up blades of grass and then kept on building, some looked more than six inches high. Knock one over (I did it with a broom handle) and they'd come pouring out in all directions.
Sound about right? Slightly larger than I understand fire ants to be.
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