Ring of Fire Ants
After 11 years and three months, I was forced to remove my wedding
ring. No, its removal wasn’t triggered by a marital spat or thugs with guns or
even out of respect for all my friends who filed for divorce this year. It was
a damn fire ant that had nothing better to do than squeeze between me and my
band of gold and give me a good bite on some tender flesh that hadn’t seen the
sun in over a decade. After soap and cold water and sticking my hand in the
freezer and coating it with vegetable oil, I finally pried the ring off, taking
part of my knuckle with it. I am not a fan of fire ants.
But I’ve hated them for years. My loathing for the beasts came to a head in
1991 when Lake Travis flooded. We lived on the north side of the lake and the
wind blew huge flotillas of the raging, swarming ants onto our shore. The water
and the mud in my poor neighbors’ houses were nothing compared to the legions
of angry, displaced fire ants that lodged in their walls and ate their
insulation and electrical wiring and stung everything in sight.
The next spring I saw the poor white-tailed fawns brought to my sister’s zoo,
hopefully to be rehabilitated and released. The tiny deer had quietly lay where
their mothers had instructed and docilely licked off the fire ants that
attacked them. The ingested ants would sting the throat and stomachs of these
helpless babies. Despite the rehabbers best efforts, many of the fawns died,
and it wasn’t a pretty way to go.
Battling this enemy isn’t easy. Despite the crazy schemes desperate land
owners have cooked up, like pouring gasoline into the mounds or electrocuting
the mounds or feeding ants grits in the hopes they’ll blow up when they drink
water, Brad Pierce, project director at the Travis County Agricultural
Extension Agency, says Logicr, an organic treatment that causes the queen to
lay sterile eggs, is still the best, most benign weapon. “People have to
realize, however, that this isn’t a quick fix, that it takes four to six weeks
for the effects to be apparent,” says Pierce.
Dr. Bart Drees, with Texas Agricultural Extension Service in College Station,
says people’s best defense is to educate themselves about the little demons.
They put out a lengthy publication called “Our Friend, Mr. FireAnt” (not
really) that you can order by calling 409/845-6800. Or, to really raise your
mailman’s eyebrows, subscribe to Travis County’s fire ant newsletter by calling
473-9600.
On the Horizon: Over at UT, zoologists Ed Vargo and Lawrence Gilbert are
causing quite a stir among entomologists and everyone that hates fire ants with
their research into a fabulous fly that lays its eggs in a fire ant’s neck and
the fly larvae eat away until the ant’s head falls off. Looks promising so far,
with no detriment to any other living creatures; wide-spread, inexpensive
treatment; and the added bonus that it’s an appropriately gruesome death.
This lack of letters is killing me. e-mail: Suzebe@aol.com or stamp-mail
at PO Box 49066, Austin, TX 78765.
This article appears in August 18 • 1995 and August 18 • 1995 (Cover).