I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t buy the kill-them-this-instant fire ant poison. I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach while reading the labels and warnings that I suspect is the same feeling a truly devout religious believer gets when they know they are about to commit a mortal sin. There was a feeling of terror too. Do I really want to have anything to do with something that almost suggests one should wear a HazMat suit while using it and then burn the HazMat suit afterward and enter a chemical decontamination unit to have the top layer of skin seared off … just to be safe? I’m barely kidding.

Have you read the labels and warnings on these things?! I knew they were bad, but I didn’t know they were THAT bad.

So it’s back to boiling water for now, and this weekend we’ll just have to find a local source for the Greenlight with Conserve that is organic-safe. I don’t care if it takes a couple of weeks to kill the ants. I’d rather not put anything as hazardous as regular fire ant poisons into my environment. Too damn dangerous.

Speaking of boiling water, I think I’ll put a few pots on now and spend some more time killing ants this afternoon. Since they are so kind to bring out their dead every night, which gives me a nice accounting of how well my efforts are succeeding, I have noted that two queens have been killed, a slew of workers, larva, and eggs are dead, and a bunch of the winged reproductives have fallen as well. So, I am making progress. Maybe I just need to keep at it for a few more days and won’t need any poisons at all, organic or not.