The fire ant solution

I'd like to think that as far as bugs are concerned, I have matured a lot over the past four years. I hardly ever yell, squeal, or demand that a male figure come in and squash whatever multiple-legged creature has made it into my personal space bubble.

Case in point #1: The other day a tiny little spider crawled out from between the cushions of our couch, whilst I was sitting on said couch. My response? "Oh, hey, a spider". After some consideration, I decided I should probably kill it, however, the spider chose that exact moment to disappear back between the sofa cushions, and has not been seen since. And do I care? No. Not really.

Case in point #2: Cockroaches do nothing for me anymore. The other day, when I was scrubbing the back porch, I must have seen about ten of the brown little beasts half-dragging themselves into a dark corner (apparently, our pest protection doesn't kill them immediately, but allows them to flail and gasp for a little while first). Instead of screaming and jumping on something, I took my broom, possibly said something like, "Hiiii--yah!" and crushed the half-dying bugs. Yes, I'm heartless. And possibly a drama queen.

Anyway, the one bug, however, that I simply cannot get used to, is the fire ant. Fireants are those gigantic red ants that attack any human being who comes within three feet of their mound and leave painful, itchy welts that can, and in my case always do, swell up to the size of a kernel of corn, and, if you're lucky, leave you with a nice little scar as a reminder of the encounter.

If it were up to me, these little beasts would be completely eradicated from the planet. Entirely. I know that every animal, no matter how small, serves a purpose, which, no matter how minute it is, keeps the circle of life, the chain of all existence in place, but you know what? If all fire ants are wiped out tomorrow, and we as human beings cease to exist, so be it.

As you can probably tell, this summer has been a tough one as far as fire ants are concerned. In spite of all our anti-pest activity from last summer, we seem to have attracted every single fire ant in the county to our backyard this year. You see, this year we don't just have the big mound under our bed room window, oh no. We have a mound at the corner of our porch, one right in front of the porch, one in the middle of the yard (but conveniently located along the little trail that runs to the pool), and one right next to the pool filter system. Now guess who's in charge of running the filter? And guess who did not see the gigantic fire ant mound?

Indeed. Me.

And I have eight fire ant bites on one foot and six on the other to prove it.

Now fire ants are nothing like their red cousins over in Europe. Georgia fire ants are European red ants on crack. With a hangover. Yes, the red ants we get in Europe will bit you, and yes, that bite will sting. But people, I was bitten almost two weeks ago, and not only can you still see the welts, they still itch and burn from time to time.

What's even worse is that any of the conventional remedies don't work for me anymore. Benadryl, creams, ointments, nothing. Washing with soap, water, even bleach, nothing will help. So when the fire ants attacked me this last time, I turned to the internet for help, and came up with worcestershire sauce. That's right, the condiment a lot of people like to use on their meat.

But hey, I like experiments as much as the next person, so I filled a bucket with worcestershire sauce, and dunked one of my feet in it. Why not both feet, you ask? Well, the scientist in me wanted to make sure that if it worked, it was because of the sauce and not some sort of placebo effect, so I decided to only use the sauce on one foot, and let the other foot serve as a control group.

Well, you'll be happy to know that the sauce worked (and the dogs licked my feet for the rest of the day), but only for about ten hours. That night, the itching and the burning returned in full force. At night, the itching got so bad, I managed to scratch one of the bites into a (I'm sorry for the visual) bloody pulp in my sleep.

The next day, I realized that a trip to CVS would be inevitable. The bites were driving me insane, and it was all I could do to not scratch them. As I was windexing our back door, the itching got so bad, I, in an act of desperation, squirted some windex on it. And there it was. Immediate relief. I squirted some on the other foot. The burning stopped. It was nothing short of a miracle, honestly. For the next few days, all I had to do was squirt some windex on my feet every morning, and I was good to go. It. Was. Awesome.

So there you have it, the solution to fire ant bites: Windex. No need to smell like a steak restaurant, just windex your feet.

And those fire ant mounds? They're gone. This week I went out and bought the meanest ant killer I could find. Every single mound has been spot treated, and they had better not come back. Because I am ready and waiting.