I’m at war!

That’s right. War! War I tell you. And it’s become very personal. Why?

Because they bit me.

What, may you ask, am I talking about?

Fire ants. It seems we’ve had several thousand fire ants decide to set up camp in and around our yard. And the problem is, they’re everywhere.

And they’re so danged hard to get rid of.

I’ve never liked ants of any sort. Well, that’s not exactly true. I watched a documentary one time about ants that showed two different ant colonies; one red, one black; go to war. Yes, I mean they literally went to war. Two huge groups from each side met somewhere in between their mounds and fought it out. When it was finished, the narrator’s words were nearly something to the effect of: “the battlefield was littered with the dead and dying from each side.”

Plus, I’ve read that fire ants down in South America can survive flooding by all clinging together and floating like a big ball on top of the water. I’d like to see that…but not up close.

My first real fight with ants, however, was when we moved to California. It seems CSUN is built on top of one huge ant bed. Sure, we’d had bouts with ants before, but we’d just put a little Terro down and they were gone in a day. Those California ants just snacked on the Terro and wanted more. We went through four or five packages before doing them any harm.

In general, though, you’ll hear me sing praises of Terro. Matter of fact, if you’re battling with ants, go grab you a package or two and it’ll take care of them.

So, I wasn’t too concerned when I saw a mound or two a few weeks ago. After all, I’d grown up in Mississippi and fire ants are just part of the package.

Funny side note here: Around 1997/8, after I’d returned to Mississippi from California, my former Editor-In-Chief Chris Ulm came out for a visit for a few days. His only excursion into the South had been Atlanta, and well—we all know Hotlanta isn’t really “Southern” anymore. So I snag my good pal Ashley Koostra and we take Chris out to the Battlefield at Vicksburg. We have a nice tour and stop at the USS Cairo to sit down for lunch. Chris sits right in a fire ant bed and gets 20-30 bites! The next words out of Ashley’s mouth were something to the effect of, “Oh yeah. We forgot to tell you about the fire ants.”

So I put some poison on the mounds and think that’ll at least knock them down some, probably not out. They multiplied. I can’t figure out why, either. Now, instead of four of five mounds, I’ve got 13 or 14 mounds of varying sizes. They’ve come up close to my house—that’s when I declared war!

This video is of Brittany playing volleyball. She plays on the JV team for Lafayette County and they’re doing well. This video shows them trouncing cross-town rival, Oxford. Brittany wears jersey #1.

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