Uncle Cledus lives in south Georgia, and is a frugal sort. The type of guy who’d squeeze an old nickel until the buffalo grunted. When his air conditioning went kaput during a freakishly hot summer a few years back, he dug around in his garage and then his attic until he found a 20-year-old electric fan. He placed the fan on the kitchen table in front of an open window, then loaded a huge stainless steel bowl with ice and sat it on the table in front of the growling fan. He and his wife, Edna, slept in sleeping bags on the kitchen floor, beneath the bowl and fan, for ten nights until his brother shamed him into calling a HVAC repairman.
Uncle Cledus has a large one-bedroom house on forty-two acres miles from another human being, but up mcm accessories close and personal with hundreds of Red Imported Fire Ant nests. Every spring, and continuing through summer, Cledus conducts his own personal Tet offensive against “the little red devils”. And of course, it’s the cheapest war on record. His first “sure-fire” weapon was molasses paste. Uncle Cledus mixed up a batch and adorned every ant mound he could find with a big, sweet glob of brown, sticky paste. Then he placed some on the widow sills in the house, around the doors, and under the sinks. A few days later, his house was infested with four more ant species, and various other sweet-toothed insects.
Never one to give up, Uncle Cledus tried Windex, vodka (kill ’em with hangovers?), Listerine, bleach, and white toothpaste. Why white? Your guess is as good as mine. Finally, his fifth cousin on his daddy’s side told him to sprinkle grits over the top of every mound cheap mcm he could find, that the ants would eat the grits and explode from the resulting flatulence. And of course, you guessed it, the ants did not fart themselves to death.
Flummoxed over the fire ant situation and at the end of his rope, Cledus was filling his lawnmower with gasoline one day and spied a huge new ant mound next to a half-dead tree two feet from his bedroom window. His brain suddenly stormed and he ran over, doused the mound with gas and set it afire. In his zeal to vanquish the ant mound he dumped too much gas on “the little red devils”. The flames roared up the tree, and jumped to the roof of the house. Before uncle Cledus, Edna, and a passing group of immigrant farm workers could put it out, the fire had consumed their mcm outlet store bedroom. Back to sleeping bags on the kitchen floor they went.
If you’ve got a fire ant problem, do not follow Uncle Cledus’s recipes for eradication. Do your own pest control, but use something that works–an insecticide that will kill the entire nest and give long-lasting relief from “the little red devils”. Fire ants get their name from the sensation one feels when injected with the ant’s venom. Fire ant stings cause intense irritation and may cause severe reactions and even death in especially sensitive people. Fire ants are very active and aggressive and may kill young wildlife or produce sores and nausea in humans. Yards and playgrounds frequented by children in fire ant rich regions, should be treated for fire ants on a regular basis during peak fire ant season.