There is a species of ant -- the fire ant -- that has moved up from the tropics and established itself in the South. When I was a child I had heard the fire ant was a pest, so I resolved to search the property for fire ant nests and eradicate them. I believed I had seen the fire ants before, but I could not distinguish them in my imagination from other harmless kinds of ants. I believed the only way of becoming familiar with fire ants was getting bitten by one. They could kill animals with their stings; this frightened me, but also attracted me to them.
There was a number of small dirt mounds scattered around the yard. I could see tiny red ants going in and out of holes at the tops of these mounds. Surely these were the ones. Only wicked, fearless insects would have established themselves so conspicuously and so near human habitation.
In appearance they were not fearsome creatures, but something in their comportment was unsettling. Their movements seemed deliberate, even measured. I believed they were conspiring in some way, and would accumulate in numbers until they became invincible.
The only appropriate way to kill them would be in a duel of wits. I wanted to challenge them on their own level, test their defenses, find and exploit their weaknesses. I hoped for circumstances that would require me to devise ingenious and bizarre weapons against the ants.
I first chose a certain ant nest off the side of the house. Once I had destroyed it, I would move on to the others.
The fire ant is very tough, and can withstand a blow. The only way of destroying one by force alone is by rubbing a stone or some other hard object over it repeatedly. At first I thought of digging the nest out of the ground with a shovel, then crushing the ants with my shoe. But this would have been too hazardous. Then the idea occurred to me of burning the ants to death with a magnifying glass.
I found this weapon worked well on isolated ants that were simply minding their business about the mound, if they were moving slowly enough. Surprise was necessary to get the beam of sunlight squarely upon them. If they detected the heat, they scurried away before the light could do harm. After a time I realized I was not killing enough of them to affect the life of the nest. They had to be drawn out and killed in numbers.
The ants were sensitive to disturbances around the nest. When I pulled on a blade of grass that was on the mound, or pushed a stick into an entrance hole, ants would stream out, ready to attack. In this defensive mode they were very agitated. But as soon as they sensed there was no intruder they began merely to mill around, and then they were easy to pick off with the magnifying glass. In this manner I increased the number of ants killed by two- or three-fold.
My methods of drawing out the ants were very damaging to the mound itself. Soon it was completely razed. The ants began to come out in smaller and smaller numbers. I assumed this was because I had killed most of the worker and warrior ants. The next step was to get at the higher castes, and eventually, the queen ant.
(Eventually, I did get get stung by some of the ants. The sting felt like a violent pinch, although it did not leave a welt. The stinger is in the abdomen, and the ant applies it by raising the rear of its body up, then pushing the stinger down into the skin.)
To reach the lower levels of the colony, I set off firecrackers in the gound. The explosions drew swarms of angry ants. After the smoke cleared I would light a second firecracker and drop it on the ants themselves. They would swarm over the firecrackers and sting them -- apparently thinking them living creatures -- and scurry away just before they exploded. Afterwards all the ants would be gone.
I began to see ants of other castes. There was a type with a larger abdomen that looked very fierce. There were also puny winged ants that were less aggressive than the others.
I could not tell how deep the nest went underground. I had made a crater about four inches deep with the firecrackers, but each explosion revealed new tunnels. Moreover, the ants seemed to be getting used to my attacks. I jammed sticks deep down into the tunnels and exploded quantities of firecrackers to draw them out, but they reacted less and less angrily each time. After a while, I felt they were ignoring me.
Finally, I decided to destroy the nest in one quick blow. I boiled water and poured it slowly over the nest, allowing time for the water to sink in. It was satisfying to know that the ants would be destroyed in the lower reaches of the colony, where I had not been able to reach. I left, expecting that when I returned I would find the nest completely lifeless.
When I came back some time later there was a neat pile of ant carcasses and destroyed larvae in the middle of a crater. The surviving ants were bringing more dead from underground and adding them to this pile. They went about their work with what seemed a horrible patience. Now and again a winged ant crawled to the surface and flew away -- later I surmised that these flying ants would begin new nests elsewhere. After that time I did not kill any more of the ants.
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