This Way To My Blog

This Way To My Blog

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Red Ant Den

Lower right corner is a red ant den or red ant bed as some call it. This is a small one compared to some. The grass is killed in a very large circle. These ants are well known in this county. I remember them when I was young. If I got a sting  it made me feel feverish and sick. I can take several fire ant stings to one red ant sting. When John first leased the ranch he tried his best to kill them out. He carried poison on the truck and put it around the bed when he ran across one. One of the landlady's daughters didn't like for him to do that as horned toads eat red ants and there were lots of horned toads on the place. The red ants are still there but we thought the horned toads were all gone until we saw two young ones at different times at different places. John always thought they might sting the cattle but he did stop putting out the poison. Hopefully the horned toads are slowly coming back .

9 comments:

Jon said...

There are lots of ants in my yard this year, but fortunately I never get fire ants like I did in San Angelo.

The ants almost seem to be immuned to poison. They keep returning, over and over.

TARYTERRE said...

Interesting. Nature takes care of business.

jack69 said...

The red ant story amazes me, I am very surprised to hear your comparison of the red ant and the fire ant. At first I thought you were talking about the Fire ant. I am not sure if we have the red ant here, we sure have the FIRE ANT!

Like this header also...

Sharon said...

I am not sure how many different ants we have here. I think mainly fire ants, with a growing number of tiny ones and big black ones. I am not fond of being stung, but my husband gets blisters for whoever is biting or stinging him. He swells up terribly. I figure they are here for a reason and do not like to poison the ground.

TexWisGirl said...

i've never seen a horned toad, so i hope they are coming back down there!

Hootin Anni said...

...we just had a 13 year old boy die from fire ant bites. They're nasty boogers and if the red ants are worse, I most definitely would NOT want to come across any.

Lucy said...

I would have thought the 2 ants were the same . You all have some strange critters there. Think I will stay in cold Ne. Will your Alaska visitors visit this year?

Wendy said...

I only kill the nests that pop up around the pool. We leave the other ones on the property alone but I have yet to see a horn toad. Hoping some day we do!

Lori said...

There were red ant beds around Thomas' home when he was growing up in Alabama, and he has some interesting stories to tell about them!