On 9/4/2017 5:14 PM, George Shirley wrote:
Those of you out there that don't have fire ants consider yourselves
blessed. We're in the progress of pouring boiling water down our biggest
pest in the gardens home. This fire ant village comes to the surface at
various places around our raised gardens and the boiling water is one
way to get rid of them. Most likely the ants are five to fifteen feet
deep and have multiple queens who lay eggs continuously.

Fire ants can really hurt you and your pets just by getting on you in
swarms and bite you and inject something that will make you hurt for a
while and leaves pustules.

They will even make their own rafts if their area floods, the ant ball
moves constantly to avoid drowning, they protect the queens and eggs as
much as possible. Came here to Texas from ships coming into port from
South America about the time I was growing up, probably mid-fifties, I
have scars from getting into the !@#$%^ ants path as a teen out hunting
and fishing or just running the woods for the hell of it. (lived close
to large ports on the Gulf Coast) Nowadays they are every where in Texas.

My lovely wife is putting gallons of boiling water down their exit hole
and chortling while she does it. I just hope it works.

George, scratching his legs again

One of the benefits of living further north where these ants cannot
survive winters.

I'd be dumping the recommended pesticides down the holes as these should
leave residues to continue further killing. Boiling water would cool
rapidly as it penetrates the ground and only kill the surface ones, I
would guess.

I get problems with yellow jackets nesting in the lawn and got a half
dozen stings on my ankle out back spraying weeds a few weeks ago. I
blasted the nest with the wasp spray soaking the ground and seem to have
wiped out the nest.