I got my revenge on the fire ants today

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thereptileenthusiast

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Fire ants are a constant nuisance to me. I have 2-1/2 acres with woods on both sides, so eradication is impossible. New nests are always popping up whenever the nests in the woods send out new queens. I have learned to live with them and just focus on keeping the tortoise pens clear. I usually just pour a pot of boiling water on the mound as soon as it appears. Regardless, I end up with painful, unsightly, puss filled ant stings on my hands and arms whenever I weed the flowerbeds.
Today I got a little sweet revenge. We have had so much rain recently that the ground has become very saturated. Last night it rained again and a large section of my property flooded. Thankfully I made sure when I set up my tortoises that they were in areas that wouldn't flood. Even the inside of the sulcatas burrow was dry. Fire ants have a way of surviving temporary floods. They make living rafts, I snapped a pic of one.
fireants.jpg
Under these circumstances it was very easy to scoop up the entire colony into a jar and then shake them until they drown. When I got tired of shaking jars and waiting for them to drown, I grabbed an aerosol paint can and a barbeque lighter and started torching the ant rafts. Many of the colonies contained multiple queens, the larger ones had 4-5 queens. This is not including the winged new queens that haven't mated yet. I found this strange, but when I googled it, it turns out multiple egg laying queens are common with fire ants. Anyways, I must have executed 50-100 queens and hundreds of thousands of workers today. Too bad they will quickly repopulate since the big colonies are in the woods bordering my property. At least I was able to get a little pay back and without being stung once.
 
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jaizei

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I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
 

Yvonne G

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Good for you, Jake. Those darned red ants are the bane of my existence. They seem to pay no attention to my tortoises, for days and weeks on end, then all of a sudden for no reason, I'll find a tortoise covered in ants. I use poison on them. I'm very careful to protect the poison from the animals.
 

wellington

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We don't have them near me, thankfully, but I would have loved to have joined you in your mission.:D. They sound awful.
 

thereptileenthusiast

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LOL @ the yoda reference.

I don't use any poisons or chemical fertilizers here because I am on well water. The amount of poison I would need to cover 2-1/2 acres would find it's way into my ground water. I know my filter is designed to handle that stuff, but it just gives me the creeps.


wellington said:
We don't have them near me, thankfully, but I would have loved to have joined you in your mission.:D. They sound awful.

I definitely could have used the help. I would have got more of them if the no-see-ums hadn't run me off in the early evening. The darn insects are in cahoots.
 

jtrux

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I hate them. I see them regularly in my yard, about an acre. I don't walk my whole yard all the time but everytime I venture into an area I haven't been in a while ill find some.
 
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