Monday, September 15, 2008

Fire Ant War

 Fire Ants come boiling up through the back wall of the studio now and then.  They build a red clay mound that comes through a seam in the floorboards.  

  The first time they did it I used boiling water out of the lab to push them back.  I'd fill up a half gallon stainless beaker at the darkroom sink and flood it over the mound.  The floor back there has a slant.  I really just wanted to see if it would work, and it cleaned up the mounds and collapsed them back under the floorboards.  It DID work, but it took a week of hot water a couple times a day to discourage them.  They stayed gone two years.

  This season I hit them with Amdro.  Yesterday.  Treated them inside and outside the wall. This morning I checked and they seemed to be in a state of retreat.  Many dead stacked outside the mound.  I can probably sweep it up tomorrow.

  Awful stuff.  They are a non-native species so I'm not as sympathetic as I might be, even philosophically, to their extermination.  Too bad we can't use Amdro on the mosquitos.

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