The Invaders

There have been many battles and wars fought on southern soil since the first humans arrived millennia ago.  Some of those conflicts have been celebrated in song and story and conjure up all kinds of martial imagery.  The names associated with them still ring down through history:  Francis Marion, who was called the “Swamp Fox”, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant and, of course, Robert E. Lee.  Then there are the battlefields:  Horseshoe Bend, Tuscaloosa, Manassas, New Orleans and Shiloh, just to name a few.

But long after the shouts, yells and screams from those and many other unremembered conflicts fell silent, other foes arrived and began their campaigns of conquest.  The war against them continues to this day and every Southerner is aware of its cost and toll on life, limb and property.  What’s remarkable about these battles is that they are being fought silently, for the most part, and receive little publicity.  But despite the lack of attention, the stakes are high as old tactics are refined and new ones introduced to combat the enemy.

I had been back in Alabama for only a day when I had my first encounter with this aggressive adversary.  Walking along the street, I espied a familiar sight on the cracks of the sidewalk.  A small mound of reddish-brown soil stood silently and innocently at my feet.  The mound had been raised by the top biological scourge of the South: the fire ant.  I lightly brushed my foot against it disturbing the mound ever so slightly.  The instantaneous reaction from the ants was neither passive nor mild.  They seemed to boil out of the nest, even emerging from entrances on the opposite side of the disturbance and rushed with a hell-bent fury to discover and attack the intruder.  Having had plenty of experience with these animals before, I didn’t hesitate but swiftly moved on and so escaped their wrath.

Fire ants are an invasive species from South America.  They arrived with a banana shipment that was unloaded in the port city of Mobile, Alabama around 1920.  Finding themselves in a completely new area and not facing the biological checks that controlled them in their home territory, they swiftly spread throughout the South.  They live underground like most ants, but the nest is marked by mounds of soil that can be up to a foot/30 cm high.

Their aggression is legendary.  They attack in swarms, first biting their victim and then stinging it repeatedly.  The burning sensation and swollen tissue arising from the assault gave them the name of fire ants.  They attack at the slightest provocation and no animal is safe.  They sting cattle and horses that blunder onto their colonies; climb trees to attack birds’ nests and kill nestlings; colonize both meadows and cultivated fields imperiling wildlife and farm workers alike.  They’ve even been known to invade houses and stake claims to computer stations, drawn to them by their heat.

All out war prevails against these red enemies.  No quarter is asked or given.  Property owners constantly scan their land for the sign of any mound that appears.  When one does, people have various ways of dealing with the ants.  Some lay down poison for them or spray some insecticide they will get from a store or perhaps the county agent.  But many take an even more aggressive approach to ridding themselves of these insects.

I remember one fellow giving me a blow-by-blow account of how he turned back the invaders who had settled on his property.  He had to deal with not just one but several colonies.  His weapons were a common sprinkler pot such as one uses to water flowers, several old blankets, matches and lots of gasoline.

“What I did, Raymond,” he told me with a great deal of relish, “was to go out early one morning with my sons and our equipment.  We filled the sprinkler with the gasoline and then lightly showered the mound with the stuff.  We chose early morning to do this because the ants aren’t as active since it’s cool.  Using the flower sprinkler to apply the gasoline doesn’t trigger their attack mode because it falls on the mound as lightly as rain does.  We thoroughly wet the mound and the ground around it, and then threw a lighted match on it.

“The mound went up in flames.  Many ants rushed out to escape only to be consumed by the fire.  The fire didn’t burn long and once it burned out we applied a second dousing of gasoline.  Then we covered the mound with a blanket to try to force the fumes underground.  In that way we smothered them, as the fumes flowed through the different tunnels, eventually killing the queen.  With her death, the whole colony collapsed.

“We weighed the blanket’s corners down with stones or bricks we had brought and then went to the next mound and repeated the procedure.  I absolutely hate fire ants and I have no mercy on them whenever I see their mounds on my property.  Fortunately, that hasn’t happened often, but when it does then I’m prepared to go to war.”

“When did you check back on the nests?” I asked him.

“Oh, we waited a couple of days or so.  When we went back we lifted off the blankets, stirred the mounds with a stick and saw what happened.  No more ants came out:  the mounds were completely lifeless.  Then just to make sure, we hit them with a shovel and scattered the dirt as far as the shovel would throw it.”

Extreme measures?  Maybe.  But if you’ve never had to deal with fire ants, you just don’t understand how vicious and dangerous they can be.  I didn’t blame this man for his actions.  Since I’ve returned to Birmingham, you can bet I’ve kept a sharp lookout for them.  I’ve been especially watchful for mounds that aren’t on my mother’s property, looking out for the smaller ones that will crop up on sidewalk cracks and partitions.  I haven’t seen one yet, but if I do then the gasoline and matches are coming out.

I have heard that an entomologist in Texas has been experimenting with imported tropical flies that particularly prey on fire ants.  His experiments enjoyed modest success against them in south Texas and the hope is that these flies will establish themselves well enough to begin to act as a natural biological check on their propagation.  It is too late to eradicate this invader from southern fields, forests, farms, meadows and yards.  But if a natural remedy can check their continued spread, then we’ll all be able to breathe (and picnic) a little bit easier.  So while the old human battlefields no longer reverberate with the sounds of conflict, this ninety-year war against fire ants shows no sign of ending.

Meanwhile, I’ve learned that by reason of the growth in international commerce, the ants have now appeared in Australia and China, arriving there via trading vessels.  I hope those lands have better success in controlling them than we have.  As for me, my enlistment in the war against fire ants will likely get me into action soon enough, and I’m ready to ‘fight fire with fire.’