There are fire ants in our yard. Fire ants. We haven’t had fire ants in our yard for a couple of years, but now there are several large nests of fire ants sprinkled around the back yard. I’d come to an agreement with the ghost ants, the black ants, and the red ants that are everywhere in my yard that as long as they left my garden and me alone, I wouldn’t go crazy with ant poisons. I feel I will be breaking that agreement. I strongly suspect I will be buying ant poison very soon. There’s no living with fire ants. While it is unfortunate that some of the ants who aren’t really bothering me much may die in the process, I cannot and will not have fire ants in my yard … especially anywhere near my garden.

I’m not even going to bother trying any of the natural ways to kill the fire ants. I have tried them all before. Some of them work reasonably well, but they tend to take forever or require constant or dangerous methods (like, say, pouring large amounts of boiling water on the mounds — works, but what a nightmare). Nope, nothing natural for me this time. I will be buying Amdro or something similar and killing them as quickly as possible.

Oh, how I hate fire ants! If you have never encountered them, consider yourself very lucky. They are, in a word, awful.