Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Breitbart.com

In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.
The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as "crazy rasberry ants"—crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and "rasberry" after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

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The ants—formally known as "paratrenicha species near pubens"—have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.

The newly recognized species is believed to have arrived in a cargo shipment through the port of Houston. Scientists are not sure exactly where the ants came from, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean.

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Exterminators say calls from frustrated homeowners and businesses are increasing because the ants—which are starting to emerge by the billions with the onset of the warm, humid season—appear to be resistant to over-the-counter ant killers.


Read more: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90LJMFO2&show_...

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Hope you all keep those ants down in Texas!

[musette_sf]

1. this sounds like a job for

Tom DeLay

[DainBramaged]

16. I'm sure Tom could use the work

[musette_sf]

18. his cousin tried to pick me up

at some ice house downtown years ago.

series!!11 cuz was in the bug biz too.

[DainBramaged]

19. YUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

[Parche]

2. Call Tom Delay

He is an exterminator that needs to be exterminated

[Selatius]

3. That's how fire ants, seen all over the South, first arrived: By cargo ship.

They arrived through the port of Mobile, AL, some several decades ago. It's impossible to get rid of them now. I bet in several more decades these crazy ants will become just as entrenched.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I think I saw this movie at a drive-in in the early 70s.

[Barrett808]

12. Indeed: Phase IV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV

[thunder rising]

31. THEM!

[ORDagnabbit]

5. you dont need poisons! diatemaceous earth. period end of story

I hate it that entire business are allowed to grow and thrive based on poisoning ourselves to get rid of insects.

[Taverner]

7. or Boric Acid

I lived in Thailand and could take out ANY insect with Boric Acid Chalk

[thunder rising]

32. diatemaceous earth? What' that do? How to apply? I use it in the pool filter.

[bitchkitty]

36. Wrong kind - you need food grade.

Use a duster outside, just put a fine layer over everything outside (plants, etc.) and put a barrier of it around your house. Put it under the fridge, cabinets, furniture, etc. They walk through it and it pierces their exoskeleton, they dry out and die.

Cedarcide (cedar oil-based) is good too and doesn't kill beneficial insects like ladybugs, spiders, etc.

[4_TN_TITANS]

47. Correct me if I'm wrong...

but I think it has the same affect as wood ashes do with mites that get on chickens. The grain particles are so small that they get between the exoskeleton plates and either irritate the mite to the point it leaves or kills it. Chickens love to flop around in ashes!

[bitchkitty]

48. Now that's interesting -

I had not heard of that. Might be kind of messy indoors though!

[DavidDvorkin]

6. I'm so glad I don't live there now

I spent 150 years in Houston, from 1967-1971. As a city, it had some good points, but the climate was ghastly. And so were the ants, even then.

[musette_sf]

17. me too

by your reckoning, i lived there for 525 years. sure felt like it.

[comrade snarky]

34. Only 240 years for me

Now I'm a latte drinking San Francisco elitist!

Houston, a city where I remember my neighbor working in his yard and all of a sudden he yelled, tore off his pants slapped at his legs and groin then ran into his house.

My only thought when that happened was "Ooooo... fire ants". Unless these suckers bite, sting or eat the flesh from you bones they aren't going to get a lot of notice around here.

I say here because for the first time in 10 years I'm back. I'm in a downtown hotel for work right now. Humans shouldn't live here, you need gills. I think I'm molding.

Though at least the malaria is under control these days. That's something anyway.

[DavidDvorkin]

43. I once found mushrooms growing under the floormats of my car, in Houston

At least, they looked like mushrooms. It was still a Democratic state in those days, so maybe they were actually Republicans.

[jaksavage]

8. A hoard of insects will come down upon thee... nt

[emmadoggy]

9. See! We must secure our ports to keep the Terrorants out!!

[Journeyman]

10. Where's Leiningen, now that we need him? . . .

Leiningen versus the Ants

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html

[yodermon]

37. you rock, i was about to post a link to the same story

lol. My fave from grade school.

[darue]

11. one more reason I'll never go near texas n/t

[truthisfreedom]

13. Yeechh.

Keep 'em. We don't want 'em up North.

[BadgerKid]

14. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

We'll be mining their sugar caves in no time.

[Barrett808]

15. I'm Kent Brockman

[BadgerKid]

25. .

Life imitates The Simpsons

[1monster]

20. Don't know if it will work for this kind of ant, but...

I used to live in an apartment building that I swear was built on an ant farm. I once placed a knife with peanut butter and jelly on it in the sink. I went into my living room and ate my sandwich.

About ten minutes after placing he knife in the sink, I went back with my plate and glass to wash up.

Crawling up the outside wall to my second floor window, across the window sill, down the wall, across the floor, up the cabinets, and into the sink was an army of little black sugar ants.

I found the only thing that kept them out of my apartment was to wipe the the window sills and the woodwork on the wall with pure chlorine bleach every three days.

The bleach interfered with their ability to lay down scent trails for their ant army. The ants could not cross the bleach-wiped window sills or walls.

[MasonJar]

21. Send them over to Crawford; they'll love that.

[Auggie]

22. Uncles are worse

[DiverDave]

52. Thats good!

made me laugh.

[kestrel91316]

23. If we're lucky, they will provide some competition for the fire ants...

[RamboLiberal]

28. The good news is they like to eat fire ants - From OP article

The good news? They eat fire ants, the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.

The bad news.

But the ants also like to suck the sweet juices from plants, feed on such beneficial insects as ladybugs, and eat the hatchlings of a small, endangered type of grouse known as the Attwater prairie chicken.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

24. Great. An ant with a heightened taste for electronics.

Just what we needed in this electronic age. The Houston Ports are the same place those nasty Asian tiger mosquitoes were imported into the US.

[Beartracks]

26. Do I need to upgrade my firewall? nt

[lonestarnot]

29. bbbbbbwwwwaaaa ah ah ha hahahahaha

[comrade snarky]

35. Less wall, more fire

[Lone_Star_Dem]

41. I'm thinking a honeypot would be more effective against this invader

From my previous experience with ants in Texas, fire just seems to tick them off more.

[crim son]

27. Ew ew ew ew ew!

I'm phobic about ants, black, raspberry, crazy, whatever. ((shudder))

[bitchkitty]

30. Cedarcide!

It kills everything safely and they don't become immune to it...and it smells wonderful!

http://www.cedarcide.com/

[DU GrovelBot]

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[FatDave]

38. At last I know what to name my band!

The Crazy Raspberry Ants!

Edit: On second thought, maybe I'll save it for my king fu death squad...

[snooper2]

39. That's just fucking great...

few years they will have made it to Dallas...nasty little fuckers

[hunter]

40. I'll bet the Argentine Ants we have here in California could still kick their butts.

What they lack in size they make up in numbers and organizational skills.

When our kids were small, and our cars were always sticky with spilled and dropped food, we went to Disneyland. In the motel parking lot one little stem of the landscaping reached out and touched our car. When our two-day two-night visit was over we went to our car and that one little stem had become an ant freeway. The inside of the car was covered with Argentine ants.

We do our best not to use pesticides because my wife and I are generally organic gardeners and we have scientific and medical acquaintances who have investigated pesticide loads in humans and they've uncovered things worthy of some concern. So we cleaned out the ants as best we could, but there was no way we could get rid of them all.

When we got home I did an experiment and brushed some of the ants out amidst our own Argentine ant colony. I'd read that the California Argentine ants are essentially one great colony, which is not the case in their native land, and this turned out to be true. The Disneyland ants merged right in with our home colony as if nothing peculiar had happened.

Eventually we had a hot sunny day, left the car windows closed, and the last of the ants either left the car or perished in the heat. I've never seen them invade a car by way of the tires, and I think it's because they won't walk across the brake dust.

The argentine ants here send swimming pool and spa repair people a lot of business. The ants get killed in switch and relay contacts, and when more ants come to pick up the dead, they get killed too. Eventually the switch or relay gets stuffed with smashed and electrocuted ants until it stops working.

[Blue_Tires]

42. sadly, this is just the latest in a series of

careless introduction of foriegn invaders in (what was once a) balanced ecosystem...over the years, as globalization brings in more imports, i've hoped ships from south america and asia would be more vigilant about flora/fauna...but of couse i know better

[hedgehog]

45. I worked in a warehouse that shipped stuff TO China - repair parts

for air conditiners on shipping containers. Anyways - stuff traveling around this country went out on any old pallet. Stuff going to China or the EU went on a plastic pallet or one that was certified pressure treated wood.

[Irreverend IX]

44. I wonder if that ant-killing fungus could take care of them...

A few days ago, this video was posted, where a Washington fungus researcher talks about using fungus to exterminate ants:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/258

[MilesColtrane]

46. Sweet Jesus!

Ross Perot tried to warn us about the crazy ants locked in the attic!

[MiniMe]

49. So we can check pestilence off the list. I would guess famine is next,

followed closely by the plague.

[rocktivity]

50. They wander erratically and are attracted to electricity?

Maybe the current interferes with their ability to communicate.


rocknation

[Lefty-Taylor]

51. Good gawd. As if Houston didn't have enough problems ...