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Fire Ants
Silly me, I thought they were called fire ants because they are red. Unfortunately I now know it's because their bite burns like fire. Actually, I think I'd rather stick my toe in fire than deal with these bites. I've tried aloe, alcohol, vinegar and peroxide. I've left a few blisters alone, popped and squeezed the others. It doesn't matter. The itching and burning are still intense. The moral of this story, don't mow the yard barefoot. Avoid ant mounds. When you hit them with the mower, ants are sprayed elsewhere. Hard to believe that two ants are causing all this pain, for days now. Supposedly the effects take weeks to go away.
Eradication of fire ants is difficult, even poison doesn't always work. I'm told that instant grits work, uncooked, sprinkled around the mound edges and replenished after it rains, but all it's seemed to do in my yard is keep the mounds contained. Another suggestion, which I have not tried because I'm a squeamish girl, is to take ants from one mound and add them to another. The theory is that this will force the ants to attack each other. It sounds like a good idea, but I'm not going to mess with these critters if I can help it. I'm just going to get more grits and stop mowing their homes.
