Crazy rasberry ants devour Houston's electronics
Houston is a-swarm with "crazy rasberry ants" -- an exotic species that eats fireants and electronic equipment. The "crazy" part is that they kind of wobble and weave when they walk. They have multiple, exterminator-resistant queens, and are attacking the local animal population as well.
They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner's gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA's Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven't caused any major problems there yet.Link (Thanks, Bonnie!)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.
"The population built up so high that typical ant controls simply did no good," said Jason Meyers, an A&M doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on the one-eighth-inch-long ant.
It's not enough just to kill the queen. Experts say each colony has multiple queens that have to be taken out.
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Sure,I live in Houston we JUST had to have special ants. We are working on the man-eaters as we speak. They are a hybrid of fire ants and hyenas. We call them bonecracker ants.
Erm, "Raspberry"?
@#3 --They aren't named after the fruit --they're named after a legendary exterminator who battled them, who was named Tom Rasberry.
Dale Gribble could get them I bet.
LEGENDARY!!!!
Did he battle these ants with his Black Battle-Axe of the Ages and his female Sorceress counterpart, while wearing a loincloth and calling down the power of the Gods or something?
I bet The Hoff could take them all on.
Wow, this could turn into 70s antsploitation movie Phase IV.
Douse them with yellow!
No, no, no. You're all misinterpreting the Egyptian cartouche-- it's "Taum Ra Bir Rey"
This red-jumpsuit god has battling the "Ant Horde" for centuries according to legend.
It's too bad that Houston is now caught in between, what with all the battle-axes and all...
Oh no!!! Our poisons and toxins don't work! What are we to do?!?
Has anyone heard of grits? Yup, grits (uncooked)! Just sprinkle them around where the ants are, the ants take them back to the nest for food and when they ingest the grits, the grits swell up and explode! No more ants. Grits will take out the queens (cuz they have to eat too) and no harmful toxic chemicals to worry about.
Cream of rice and cream of wheat cereals (dry) work well too.
Oh, and I thought it was Dale Dribble, not Gribble...
Hey, ants got rights.
PLOYNTABS is right.
They have the right...... the right to party
But they gotta fight for their right to PPPPAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@#^ --No, you moron! He battled them with his mighty lightning-bolt mace while riding a polar bear clad in spiked leather armor. With a Valkyrie riding bitch with an AK-47. I know this because I airbrushed it on the side of my custom van...
I'm waiting for the product placement, like the newer post. Trying to get people to buy something or give up liberties from being scared at something rediculous.
@#2: Hehe
@#4: There are legendary exterminators? Sweet.
@#10: I would never waste my grits on ants. Unless they had brown sugar in them. Then they could have em.
Chocolate Covered Rasberry Ants...
Wow The Mainstream media really makes these things sound like super intelligent ant invaders that's ruling of Houston is only a matter of time. I'm sure they're not the easiest things to kill, I have a hard time believing that "They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide."
In the end, it's just Houston, no big loss. You smear every surface in the city with feces and no one would know the difference, it's such an ugly city.
Obligatory let me be the first to welcome blah blah the usual.
Protect the Queen!
Which one's the queen?
I am!
NO, I AM!
The problems killing them sound exactly the same as the problems killing off carpenter ants. And probably other types of ants too, but we only notice that they're hard to kill when they're wrecking our stuff.
Jeez, Enochrewt, where's the love? Yeah, I'm from there. That aside, I just never thought it would all end this way...
#23: Hey, I didn't say that you couldn't like Houston, but there's no denying it's a horribly ugly city. not to mention unmitigated disaster as far as civil planning, pollution and environmental concerns.
Now it's being overrun by super ants. LOL It's so fitting.
Ah, yes- the multiple queens defense.
Hey, it worked at Stonewall!
NO YOU'RE NOT!
I, for one, am stunned that no-one's said "I, for one, welcome our raspberry-flavoured overlords" and we've made it through 20-something comments.
I can't help but be reminded of the Replicators from Stargate SG1. Those giant queens, producing hundreds of self-replicating metal-eating death bugs. Houston is fuxxrd.
Comment #27, meet Comment #17 . . . .
I'll be honest, reading this story this morning it did seem a little bit like these bugs were a next, scary step in ant evolution. Less rigid social structure (implied), problem solving skills, catchy media-friendly name, and mysteriously compelled to destroy the electronic devices that keep modern society afloat. You could almost hear all the wannabe horror novelists start taking frantic notes.
I just had a horrible dream that raspberry ants were in my sister's brain.
The film Phase IV from 1974:
"Desert ants suddenly form a collective intelligence and begin to wage war on the desert inhabitants. It is up to two scientists and a stray girl they rescue from the ants to destroy them. But the ants have other ideas."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070531/
I was 14 when I saw this in the theater and certain scenes still haunt my dreams.
I wonder what is their species. Does anyone know? Are they related at the crazy yellow ant (Wikipedia)? Sounds pretty nasty; invasive species are one of the prime drivers in the loss of biodiversity.
Hans:
Paratrechina pubens
I was so disappointed with how they look. I was expecting giant red asses.
For only $14.95 you can buy Rasberry Ant Queen Sonic Emitter that will repel the queen to a distance of 250'. That will keep them out of your yard.
Small Print: Until the Rasberry Feasters eat it.
Re #27
1. They're not raspberry flavored, I'm pretty sure.
2. This ain't Slashdot, I'm positive.
"That's IT. . . FIRE!"
#10
Grits are corn. Ants love corn. But they don't eat it. Thier larvae do. Ants don't eat solid food.
http://fireant.tamu.edu/research/arr/category/non-chemical/97-01pg4/97-01pg4.htm
Corn grits are often used as carriers for real pesticides which is probably where the idea came from.
Think about it? If grits are the carriers for posions then all posions using grits as a carrier would work. And I can tell you from personal experience they do not.
Phase IV is a great movie that I mostly remember seeing very late at night on TV as a kid.
Ants don't eat solid food.
There are sweet-eating ants and carnivorous ants. The carnivorous ones definitely eat solid food.
Ants?!
I HATE ANTS.
These things sound straight from hell. Not only do Argentine Ants and Fire Ants have to become a threat to me, but suddenly some jerk imports those suckers and I cry myself to sleep.
Why can't it just be spiders? Spiders are CUTE.
#16 must be from Dallas... or WORSE.
I'm from Houston, and I can say that anything that "eats fire ants" is 100% ok in my book. Anybody who has ever accidentally put their bare foot in a fire ant hill wishes total death on those fuckers.
Why can't it just be spiders? Spiders are CUTE.
I for one would welcome our eight legged overlords.
Crazy ants, crazy bees- keep all that shit over in the places where people are hardcore enough to handle it, okay? I am not hardcore.
But in all honesty these don't sound -too- terrible.
We have things here that make your blood run cold.
I've seen solfugids bigger than my hand. When they're not eating scorpions or mice, they chase down birds and eat them.
Tarantula Hawks have the most painful sting in the Western hemisphere (think writhing on the ground and screaming.) Fun fact: it captures a tarantula, drags it to its nest and lays an egg in it. When the egg hatches, it eats the tarantula. The bigger the tarantula, the bigger the hawk.
The Velvet Ant (or Cow Killer) is so fluffy that you almost want to pet it, but its sting is almost as bad as the Tarantula Hawk.
The lovely Brown Recluse or Violin Spider. When it bites you, it swells up to the size of a grapefruit. You may have joint pain and immobility for years.
The Black Widow can also cause permanent damage. Sometimes the abdomen is bigger than the last joint of my thumb.
The local scorpionry is translucent for ease of foot contact. They love to come in the house when it rains.
At least Tarantulas are easy to see. It's amazing how they can squeeze through a tiny little crack to get into the bedroom at night.
Got sleep?
Antinous, what about these?
I don't know if this will shed light on the subject or not, but I live in GA where we have fire ants. The ants do wind up inside a/c units here, where they bridge connections on circuit boards with sand or clay granules or their own conductive bodies, and fry them. Then you wait for plant services to come by and replace your a/c unit.
Also, they sting like hell.
Lore has it they are attracted to low frequency wave emissions or something but I don't think that's proven.
If you put Shai-hulud in water, he breaks up into sand trout. Everyone knows that.
We also have the black widows and cow ants (velvet ants) Actually a wingless wasp!
I found 13 black widows in one day tearing down a loose stone wall in our back yard. Want to compare venomous snake species? You aren't in Australia, are you?
Fire ants are one of the best arguments for outlawing lawns and golf courses in the desert. They only exist where there's moist ground.
They go crazy in a drought, though. They come a-boilin' out of them hills.
No. Palm Springs for me. At least the monsters here only hurt you. The ones in Australia can kill you. We do have rattlers, but to my enormous chagrin, I have never run into one. I would love to meet one.
You have a coast of some sort around there, right?
~140 miles away. This is the deep desert, one of the hottest and driest places on earth. Hotter than Cairo, cooler than Mecca, much drier than either one. Up to 123°, 2% humidity and a dewpoint frequently below 0°F.
Antinous, you never told me you lived in Hell.
So, a coast, but with a super long beach.
Well, a beach with a population of 10,000,000. You cannot reach the sea without crossing Angelyne.
Geography is not my strong suit, but that's pretty much how I envision California as seen from space.
Antinous; you mention so many and do not mention which are tasty and how to prepare them. So much available protein!
Seen this? I haven't decided if it is evil yet.
http://www.japanesebugfights.com/
I'm going with evil. Putting a couple of male beetles of the same species together to ram each other would be okay. This is just dog-fighting.
I haven't eaten any bugs (unless you count weevils), but I've had rattlesnake a few times.
Antinous @51 you said you'd never run into any rattlers. So, then you said you've had rattlesnake a few times (I assume you mean "had" in the consumed sense, and not in the biblical :)
Just curious, do they have restaurants out there that serve it, or did friends cook it or what? And most important - does it taste like chicken?
chocolate covered roasted locusts?
Just curious, do they have restaurants out there that serve it, or did friends cook it or what?
Chinese restaurants in SF. I had it for a New Year's Eve feast once, before the Braised Golden Weasel with Leeks. There also used to be an amazing Chinese herbal restaurant where all the dishes were traditional Chinese medicine. Rattlesnake usually shows up in soup or at the bottom of a bottle of liquor. It's more like a moist white fish, like sole, than like chicken.
Tennessee Williams was famously approached at a bar by a drunken sailor who said, "I'm so horny I could fuck a snake." Mr. Williams replied, "Then, Sir, I suggest that you do just that."
Taku-san, are the bugs fighting and ultimately eating their kill? If they are, it is a violent feeding. If the bug will provide no nutritional value to the other bug, then it is evil.
what is the threshold of respectable life? Think carefully.
All life is respectable. Ideally, I would afford the same courtesy to an ant that I do my dog. I am not ideal, though I do try to rescue insects and release them.
But I mean, hey, I feed Chiquita (Liv's Banana King) mice. If the victor insect is obtaining necessary nutrition to continue its life, than its okay. If it's just amusement (which is what it looks like) it's no better than dog-fighting as Ant said (but a little bit more palatable because for some reason, I, like most people, afford mammals more respect than insects.)
is an Acquired Immuno-Deficency Syndrome Virus a living thing? A prion? The fire-ant that stings you? The locust that eats your crops and starves your child? The mosquito that gives your mother malaria? The liver fluke that infects your child? Karl Rove?
I'd sooner call the AIDS virus living than Karl Rove.
Viruses and bacterium aren't living, you wily pickle!
I go down to the pool to rescue the bees that fall in. I reserve violence for bugs that try to harm me, like the four mosquitoes that I killed last night. One for each hour of sleep that I ended up getting.
oi vey... after you have rested, we must continue
This article (and the comment madness) reminds me of my favorite short story, Leinigen Versus the Ants. Absolutely wonderful story.
http://www.amlit.com/Stephenson/SS/LeiningenVersustheAnts.html
PS: After Antinous' post, Unicorn chaser, so I CAN SLEEP AGAIN.
Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Houston has a substantial dollar value attached to it.
Those ants really run crazy! Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSUa9VsOqBo