LOL - they were drawn to the fire where they could worship their ancient god!

Holy moly. These things ain't natchral. I've heard they are attracted to electricity. Here in Fort Worth, in my parents' yard, we truly do not have fire ants. My dad doesn't believe that I have them in Red Oak, and I didn't believe that anyone was free of them till I saw for myself.

Why? Can anyone tell me why suburbs don't have them? Is it the well established suburbs? Is it use of pesticides? Not that they have been used here (I don't really know one way or the other). Is it the pattern of cement and earth? Do they need a certain amount of unimpeded ground?

That's a good question PPB. I wonder how much acreage a fireant mound needs to survive. I know they like to inhabit a mono-culture, no other ants, or insects for competition. If you see a barren strip of grass on the median it is covered in mounds in the country areas. And there is a cow pasture near here that has thousands of mounds. They don't have many cows, maybe they got et?

Maybe they don't like thick grass like suburbians have.

That's scary and disgusting.
When we used to live in a neighborhood, we had them, but never saw their beds till right before a rain.
I wish I could have seen them burn

Jolanaweb made me think of offering to pick them up with tweezers and put their little smoking corpses into a bottle to send to her, but then, I thought how nice it would be if you could ring your property with dead fire ants and it would scare them all off. Someday there will be a fix as simple.

I was also wondering about the introduced birds. If they are so overwhelmingly successful at procreating to the detriment of our native birds - what must the bird population be like where they came from?? The ones that keep them in check. They must be kept in check, or England would have no other birds but the English Sparrow. But I digress.

Okay - next day, I walk past the ashes and the ants have built on top of them. Maybe they are attracted to the alkalinity.

I guess they have A LOT of birds, lol

Okay, the ant story keeps getting worse and worse.
I don't know about the alkalinity, we don't have alkaline soil now and they are everwhere. We have to really stay on top of them.
I think they were worship the fire.
They do burn, we had a fire going several years ago and there was an ant bed near it and my son was scooping a bed of ants with a wire mesh strainer that I had for the garden soil and tossing them in the fire and they made a cool crackling noise while burning.
Kinda sick ,if you don't think about how they burn the crud out of you when they sting, but enjoyable when you do, lol

We have them. But at least I can see the little b*st*rds. Chiggers are my nemisis! I hate them!!! They are sly SOBs that tear me up! I'm going to pour sulfur on their wee heads and laugh as they die or depart. Funny for being so hellish they sure do hate sulphur.PJ

Good one PJ - I used to suffer from the wee red ones, but the sulfur does such a good job. Remember the sock-o-sulfur to keep outside the door. Bang it on your ankles when you go out, but keep your eyes closed.

Yep the TX sock-o-sulphur! I'm amazed at all the new stuff I'm exposed to here! PJ

I don't know about not having them in the suburbs - maybe not as bad as out in the country, but we do get them here in Allen - just north of Plano. The little buggers like the area close to the street right next to my sidewalk. It is dry and sterile out there - just like they like it.

Now I can say that I do not have chiggars in my yard, thank goodness!

Gave all the ants enough orange oil to keep them in shiny furniture for ages, gave them chemicals they snort for fun at parties, gave them hot water for steam baths, haven't given them hot embers yet. Afraid they would use fire pit as smoker grill for my legs. Gave up fighting them, I'll just be glad they haven't buddied up with chiggars to finish me off.

Susan, I love your sense of humor.
I didn't have anything else, so I used Sevin dust and danged if it didn't work.

LOL, I do too, you are full of it, lol

I'm in the Houston subsurbs and we most definitely have fire ants. They still rule my property although I would like to change that. When the pesticides would wear off (last year we had our house sprayed professionally once a quarter) they would get inside. Just a couple days ago I got my first bite of 2007--in my son's room. Lovely, eh? I'm trying to hold off on the chemicals this year and go organic but we'll see how long I can hold out if they come into the house in any numbers. They seem to be under the foundation and I think that it's going to be a long hard war in which I just have to improve the condition of the soil and the yard to get them to go elsewhere (my neighbor's nasty yard would probably be more interesting to them if I can improve things here).

We had fire ants in a second floor bedroom once. I finally found where they were heading, it was a stored basket of white sheets. The ants prefer the color white, Electricity, fire, chemicals, rock or cement edging and no competition.

What is their weakness? They don't like it wet but can live for days underwater. They melt and burn and I supposed they freeze.

Have you seen the dandy-lion killers that are propane powered flame thrower things? You carry the tank on your back and walk around the yard shooting dandy lions. But you know what we would be shooting. That wouldn't work inside of course. I'd be burning a lot of propane with that.

I wonder if sulfur bothers them. Or ground up jalapenos, or baby powder. They use wheat flour on some bugs to gum up their jaws. Wonder if that would work on a fire ant mound. I've got enough to do some controlled experiments.

First of all be careful, but please video the experiments.
LOL

I live in the suburbs and still have them! Though mine are mostly confined to the Hell Strip. I always find them when I'm pulling up Bermuda grass - how appropriate!

Now when I bought my house, it had some active termites so I had Termidor put down. My termite guy (20 yrs in the biz) recommended it over the bait traps and other options I was considering. Basically, this stuff sits in a thin layer about 8" underground, all around your house. Any type of insect that crawls through the layer takes the poison back to it's nest and shares it, etc...kills the whole lot of them. So far I've been here three years and no problem with roaches, crickets, etc in the house.

So far they don't market Termidor for other insects, but I think they are considering it. I later took a marketing survey where they described this type of product marketed for ants and crickets. They were trying to determine a price point. (A very high price point!) I only spent $300 for one application and my termite guy said it was good for 5 years (according to the label), but he said they still have studies going on 20 years based on the same application and it is performing just as well. I don't like to use pesticides in general, but with termites I didn't want to take any chances! And I'm all about doing it once! My parents used the bait traps and still had reinfestations. And they had a ton of fire ants too!

If fire ants were 1 inch long, they would rule the whole damn world, and we would be their lunch!
Jim

By suburbs, I guess I meant older suburbs. My parents' house was built in the 1920s. Ya'll in newer suburbs may have gotten there after the fire ants were already there. I keep seeing little ant beds and I poke them, fully expecting them to explode with a froth of fire ants, but they never do. No fire ants here.

PPB, I wouldn't say that too loud, they think they are everywhere! If they were 1 inch long, they would rule the world.
Jim

I'm very glad you don't have them but I think Jim makes a good point, don't say it too loud, lol

Say what?!? I wasn't talkin'!!!