[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Fire Ants (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 4/5/2010 7:20:05 AM EDT
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Let's talk about fire ants. I was raised in the deep south, about as far south as you can go without going north. A year or so ago, I took a trip up (Yes, up) to Fort Benning in Columbus, GA, to do some training for my owner... I mean the Army. One day, while strolling through a field and trying to avoid wait-a-minute vines and briar patches, I spy a small red mound of dirt in the distance. That's the last thing I remember. When I came to, I was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. I was surrounded by my wide-eyed buddies, who explained to me that I had just gone ape-shit on that little pile of red dirt. Spewing obscenities, stomping, jumping, kicking, and finally pissing on it, I had done my damndest to exterminate those little bastards. The yankees that were training with me were flabbergasted that I could hold so much hatred for an insect, and were disgusted that I would be so cruel as to annihilate their home. Does anybody else get it? Why don't you northerners understand the scourge on the planet these things are? Give me some good fire ant horror stories.
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Quoted: Best if left alone. Really. Sounds like you would rather see the fire ants continue to spread across the country, wiping out all of the native ant species in their path. (not to mention biting the shit out of kids in kindergarten... which may or may not have happened to me)
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Quoted:
Let's talk about fire ants. I was raised in the deep south, about as far south as you can go without going north. A year or so ago, I took a trip up (Yes, up) to Fort Benning in Columbus, GA, to do some training for my owner... I mean the Army. One day, while strolling through a field and trying to avoid wait-a-minute vines and briar patches, I spy a small red mound of dirt in the distance. That's the last thing I remember. When I came to, I was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. I was surrounded by my wide-eyed buddies, who explained to me that I had just gone ape-shit on that little pile of red dirt. Spewing obscenities, stomping, jumping, kicking, and finally pissing on it, I had done my damndest to exterminate those little bastards. The yankees that were training with me were flabbergasted that I could hold so much hatred for an insect, and were disgusted that I would be so cruel as to annihilate their home. Does anybody else get it? Why don't you northerners understand the scourge on the planet these things are? Give me some good fire ant horror stories. Fire ants are what nuclear bombs were designed for. Those are some of the most evil fuckers on the planet. |
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Best if left alone. Really. Sounds like you would rather see the fire ants continue to spread across the country, wiping out all of the native ant species in their path. (not to mention biting the shit out of kids in kindergarten... which may or may not have happened to me) They use a stinger in their backside |
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Quoted: The "imported" thing doesn't bother me.You're upset because they don't belong here. They were 'imported' from a South American cargo ship in the 1950s. Similar situation to jackrabbits in Australia. The, bite the fuck out of you and kill little kids thing bothers me. White people were imported on ships, and they don't bother me one bit.
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Amdro ant bait works pretty well.
I was bitten on the ankle about 8 years ago a half dozen times. There are still small red marks! I hear a story about an old woman in a retirement home. She was senile and would wonder. When they found her body she apparently had over 4000 bites on her from those little fukers! |
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Quoted: After clamping on with their jaws...Quoted: Quoted: Best if left alone. Really. Sounds like you would rather see the fire ants continue to spread across the country, wiping out all of the native ant species in their path. (not to mention biting the shit out of kids in kindergarten... which may or may not have happened to me) They use a stinger in their backside |
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A state representative was putting up hay on his farm some years ago and got into some.
Numerous stings. Anaphylactic shock and acute myocardial infarction. RIP. If the little sumbitches would eat termites I'd put up with them. There have been some studies with a wasp from S America that prey on the ants. Supposedly effective, but I've seen no widespread introduction here yet. |
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One of my customers drove off the road and wrecked his car. Where he ran off the road was a very steep bank down into a pine plantation. He was trapped in the car for about 16hrs, and was covered in fire ants the entire time. Literally had thousands of bites all over his body. I couldn't even imagine.
My personal worst experience was when I was sitting on the step where you step down from my house on to my screened in back porch. I was wearing some loose board shorts and had been working in the yard. I was dirty so I had sat down on the step while talking on the phone instead of walking inside. Then I felt the pain. I had gotten several of those little bastards in my shorts. They nailed me right on the wrinkly butt hole, taint and ball sack in a precision timed strike. Literally all 3 bit me at the exact same time. |
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Quoted:
There have been some studies with a wasp from S America that prey on the ants. Supposedly effective, but I've seen no widespread introduction here yet. I saw a furry, black and red catepillar walking over a mound, sucking them up like a vacuum cleaner when I was a kid. Impressive. Fireants are one of the main reasons I've always wanted a giant anteater. |
Fire ants are the scourge of the earth!! Destroy them all!! 
I hate cutting grass with the push mower. No matter how hard I try to step over the mounds, they always grab on and sting like crazy. Last year I think I killed over 30 mounds in my back yard alone and still didn't get them all. When it rains in the summer, the mounds multiply. |
I'm extremely allergic to them. The USAF sent me to a venom specialist at Travis AFB in CA back around 1999 to test me to see just how bad my allergy was. They gave me a 1/1,000,00 hit of venom under my skin via needle. I had a reaction. They then hit me with a 1/100,000 hit, and I blew up like a balloon. Doc decided not to kill me with the next test, and handed me an epi pen and said that's it. They scheduled me for anti-venom shots, and I started the routine twice, but, deployments to the sandbox kept interrupting that schedule, which took around a year and involved 1-2 shots per week depending on what dosage. I hate Fire Ants. 
During M-60 School back in 1984, at Camp Bullis in San Antonio, there was a Fire Ant mound around one foot tall, two feet wide, and almost 5 ft long. I saw a dude roll through it. Un-Fucking Real. Dude almost died. We dragged him away from mount doom, stripped him, emptied all our canteens on him, and waited till the ambulance showed up. I know the kid lived, but, I think he was washed back due to that incident. I kicked the mound one day just to see them swarm..... My worst experience was standing at attention on the Parade Field during a huge BMTS formation at Lackland AFB... and Fire Ants crawled up my leg. |
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First encounter with fire ants came when I was about eight. I was at my grandparent's farm in north Georgia chasing a butterfly with a net. The butterfly landed on what I thought was a cow patty and I trapped it with the net.
Now, you must understand that this was immediately before our move from behind the lines in NY down here to TX, so I had no prior knowledge of the evil that lurked beneath. Indeed, the innocuous looking brown heap was not, in fact, a cow patty. It was a fire ant mound, and when I jammed my hand under the net to grab the butterfly, the little bastards swarmed my hand. I ended up going to the doc (I don't think Pawpaw realized how many times I'd been stung - he probably thought I was having a serious reaction to a single sting) and my hand itched liked the devil for days. Since then I rarely pass a mound without giving it a kick or throwing a rock into it. |
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Quoted: I have some Demon, WP that is quite usefull on their mounds. Just wet it down, walk away, and return in 8 hours to view the satisfying sight of thousands of dead ants. I love bringing wholsale death and destruction to those biting little sonsabitches. That works. Any of the permethrin/cypermethrin/*methrin formulas will terminate them with extreme prejudice. I spray every mound I find on my property, if you have kids, you don't want fire ants. |
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Quoted: First encounter with fire ants came when I was about eight. I was at my grandparent's farm in north Georgia chasing a butterfly with a net. The butterfly landed on what I thought was a cow patty and I trapped it with the net. Now, you must understand that this was immediately before our move from behind the lines in NY down here to TX, so I had no prior knowledge of the evil that lurked beneath. Indeed, the innocuous looking brown heap was not, in fact, a cow patty. It was a fire ant mound, and when I jammed my hand under the net to grab the butterfly, the little bastards swarmed my hand. I ended up going to the doc (I don't think Pawpaw realized how many times I'd been stung - he probably thought I was having a serious reaction to a single sting) and my hand itched liked the devil for days. Since then I rarely pass a mound without giving it a kick or throwing a rock into it. I was playing furiously at recess, trying to flip the swingset, throwing rocks at girls, and giving another kid a candy bar to eat a grasshopper. All of this productivity wore me out, so I decided to pop a squat on a step next to the gym. Apparently, my feet were right next to a fire ant bed. They swarmed up my legs and quickly worked their way up to my torso. Fire ants have a nasty habit of coordinating all of their stings at roughly the same moment, and so they did. The next thing I remember was my gym teacher showering me off in the locker room. I was tore up from that incident for weeks.
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| gas works great. I know what you mean though. I was born and raised in Fairhope AL..about as far south as you can get in AL and I have scars on my feet and insides of my toes from fire ants while fishing barefoot as a kid. It got to the point there they didnt hurt anymore and I enjoyed popping the blisters...that sounds awful, but it is what it is. |
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Quoted: Quoted: ...The next thing I remember was my gym teacher showering me off in the locker room. I was tore up from that incident for weeks. The ants or the shower? There are still towns in America where you know everybody. The gym teacher was a family friend of ours, and whipped my ass a few times when I deserved it. So in short: the ants. Geez, I knew some perv was going to ask that.
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Hey RDS, I call where you and I grew up "Way South Georgia". I grew up in Norman Park/Moultrie myself and yes I understand. My hatred is more centered on wasps however considering Fire Ants never gave me a near-death experience as the wasps did. Different story. Anyway, back to the ants. I've shot them, poured gas on them, pissed on them, blown them up with M80s and firecrackers, flooded them out and poisoned them. One of the easiest and most effective things I've seen however is used cooking oil. Cooking oil on a mound = dead ants and an utterly destroyed mound. |
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I remember how we used to hit fire ant mounds with sticks then burn the little fuckers with WD40 flame throwers.
The thing that really pisses me off about fire ants is that floods don't kill them. The just join together and make a giant ball of fire ant death. I remember the warnings after Katrina about the dangers of being in the water. As soon as they hit something, the whole colony swarms all over it. GIANT FIRE ANT BALL |
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Quoted: Hey RDS, I call where you and I grew up "Way South Georgia". I grew up in Norman Park/Moultrie myself and yes I understand. My hatred is more centered on wasps however considering Fire Ants never gave me a near-death experience as the wasps did. Different story. Anyway, back to the ants. I've shot them, poured gas on them, pissed on them, blown them up with M80s and firecrackers, flooded them out and poisoned them. One of the easiest and most effective things I've seen however is used cooking oil. Cooking oil on a mound = dead ants and an utterly destroyed mound. I grew up in Hamilton county, on the banks of the Suwanee. People not from our state just don't understand. I tell them what state I'm from, and they say, "What's with the accent?" Ignorance.
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Quoted: Let's talk about fire ants. I was raised in the deep south, about as far south as you can go without going north. A year or so ago, I took a trip up (Yes, up) to Fort Benning in Columbus, GA, to do some training for my owner... I mean the Army. One day, while strolling through a field and trying to avoid wait-a-minute vines and briar patches, I spy a small red mound of dirt in the distance. That's the last thing I remember. When I came to, I was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. I was surrounded by my wide-eyed buddies, who explained to me that I had just gone ape-shit on that little pile of red dirt. Spewing obscenities, stomping, jumping, kicking, and finally pissing on it, I had done my damndest to exterminate those little bastards. The yankees that were training with me were flabbergasted that I could hold so much hatred for an insect, and were disgusted that I would be so cruel as to annihilate their home. Does anybody else get it? Why don't you northerners understand the scourge on the planet these things are? Give me some good fire ant horror stories. I remember a local story back in the eighties in the Atlanta area where a couple of bubba brothers got drunk on a Saturday afternoon, started fighting about something and one of them fell onto a fire ant nest, passed out, and died at the scene....dem's some mean sumbitches.....we used to punch a hole down the center and fill with gasoline....or drop M-80's down... |
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Quoted: Quoted: SNIP I grew up in Hamilton county, on the banks of the Suwanee. People not from our state just don't understand. I tell them what state I'm from, and they say, "What's with the accent?" Ignorance. LMAO! When I was in the Navy I'd lose the accent a little after months away from home. But I'd call home and I'd always get stopped right after .... "What they hell is up with the accent ..... wait .... DID YOU CALL HOME AGAIN?" LMAO! Screw em. Please write me off as just another dumb hick.   |
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Quoted:
Let's talk about fire ants. I was raised in the deep south, about as far south as you can go without going north. A year or so ago, I took a trip up (Yes, up) to Fort Benning in Columbus, GA, to do some training for my owner... I mean the Army. One day, while strolling through a field and trying to avoid wait-a-minute vines and briar patches, I spy a small red mound of dirt in the distance. That's the last thing I remember. When I came to, I was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. I was surrounded by my wide-eyed buddies, who explained to me that I had just gone ape-shit on that little pile of red dirt. Spewing obscenities, stomping, jumping, kicking, and finally pissing on it, I had done my damndest to exterminate those little bastards. The yankees that were training with me were flabbergasted that I could hold so much hatred for an insect, and were disgusted that I would be so cruel as to annihilate their home. Does anybody else get it? Why don't you northerners understand the scourge on the planet these things are? Give me some good fire ant horror stories. I was on Benning for four years and hate those little fuckers. Kicked the shit out of every hill I saw. We did have contests though, on who could hold their hand in a hill the longest...... |