Rain and fire ants

Last night, or early this morning, it rained. Well, more than that. It POURED!

As in:


Lightning flashing, thunder crashing, tree limbs trashing up my yard.
Unlike the rain in Spain’s dry plain, this thunderstorm came fast and hard!

Twas quite a show, I’ll have you know, unlike the snow on Christmas day.
The wind did roar, the rain did pour, and then came more! Till we did say,

“That’s quite enough of all this stuff. Our yard can’t slough it all away.”
Twas real, not fake; our yard a lake! For goodness sake, the sky was gray!

But now, tonight, it’s quite a sight, the water’s gone; the ground’s a mire.
And all around are found the mounds of those red ants that sting like fire.


OK, that was a weak effort. But you get the picture.

I went out into the yard after getting home from work, intending to pick up some of those downed tree limbs. I grabbed a few, carried them to the street and tossed them into a pile where the trash collection folks will pick them up for me. Then I slapped at my hands to knock away those !*#@#!!#&!* fire ants that were stinging me in six different spots all at once.

When the ground gets good and soaked, the ants all come up to the surface and cling to whatever is there. I didn’t notice them on the branches.

In the next 24 hours or so they’ll dig themselves new nests and create mounds all around the yard. So tomorrow when I get home from work I’ll take a sack of ant poison and sprinkle those new mounds to discourage them from breeding.

I know; it doesn’t really do much good. They’ll just abandon that mound and make another one 4-5 feet away. But at least I FEEL like I’m getting back at them.