Summertime in Brazil means lots of samba music, sunburns, sittin' poolside, soccer, monsoons, Brazilian barbecue (a.k.a. churrasco) and sweatin' your brains out at about 4:00. But it also means these:
Invasions. Invasions of the worst kind - a breed of animal intent on hurting anything that stands still for more than 15 seconds. You never, ever walk barefoot on the grass in Brazil. And apparently these little buggers have hitched a ride from my beloved country to my other beloved country; they are taking over Texas as we speak. Sorry 'bout that.
This morning I woke up early and ruthlessly sprinkled poisonous dust on more than 20 mounds in our lawn. This afternoon I will pour boiling water on them - just to make sure. Because my compassion for all things animal only extends so far. I have zero pity for tiny creatures that sting and blister my feet into oblivion.
Some people try to convince us that fire ants are the good guys:
Fire ants voraciously consume populations of fleas, ticks, termites, cockroaches, chinch bugs, mosquito eggs and larva, scorpions.
Fire ants are extremely effective in controlling plant-feeding insects and arthropods such as boll weevils in cotton and stinkbugs in soybean. Under some conditions fire ants keep the pest populations below the level of economic loss providing a financial savings to growers.
Fire ants can benefit such crops as cotton, sugarcane, and soybean because they aerate and break up the soil making more water and nutrients available to the plants.
Auburn University/Alabama Agricultural Experimental Station and Texas A&M/Texas Agricultural Experimental Station studies have demonstrated that fire ants can kill other costly agricultural pests which do more economical harm than they do. These insects include the corn worms, cotton flea hopper, army caterpillars, and sugarcane borers.
After a colony vacates a mound in your garden, you are left with beautifully aerated and tilled soil.
Humans are not at the top of the fire ant food pyramid—as long as we keep moving.
Whatever. Die, die, die.
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12 comments:
Yes, there were HUGE mounds in Texas everywhere. I hate ants, even the none fire ones!!!! Our apartment was always being attacked by the little sugar ants....I am with you DEATH TO ALL (ants that is)!!!!!
Ick, ick, ick! Now I'm all itchy.
I'm more afraid of ants than any other insect. It's that nasty swarming and covering thing they do. I join your die, die, die chorus.
My rule of thumb is: if a bug is in my house it DESERVES to die. In fact, it was asking for death. It should know better. No mercy.
Wow. No likey.
I was with you on the baby opossums and I with you on the fire ants. Funny how those things work, huh?
Ugh. I can only imagine.
I remember seeing mounds taller than me...hundreds and hundreds of them...EVERYWHERE on our cross country road trips. Never met one, personally, though. Good luck.
LOL I loved your last line!!! I'm glad we don't have those little demons here...but then they'd never survive these freaking cold winters!!! Hey...maybe a few fire ants would warm things up!
YUCK!! One place I lived, we had SO many scorpions we couldn't count them. They don't die you know. So I decided I would MAKE them leave this world and smashed them so gruesomely that there was nothing left. I am not proud of it. :) I was a crazy woman when it came to those things!
I had a dream about you last night! I don't remember any details, but I know I was in Brazil with you. I think there were lots of bugs and animals.
This is also me confessing to reading this yesterday and not commenting. Sorry. I hope all things with "fire" are consumed quickly.
Another Texan here- any ant you don't kill is one that I have to. They should all die.
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