[TheForge] Fw: Fire ants

[Jerry Frost]

Neutrons have good penetration, don't know about gammas. Maybe ask the Hulk?

This talk of speculative ant killing methods reminds me of an episode from 
my adventurous and explorative youth. Father's passed on now so I'll relate 
the experience. We used to have two basic kinds of ants, big red ants and 
big black ants, the red being the more agressive, hence evil ones. There 
were small red ants that were damn nasty, maybe fire ants but I don't know. 
Anyway, as kids we tried all kinds of things to kill off nests, most 
failures. I say most because I know of one that worked spectacularly well.

I swiped a 2lb. cam of 3F black powder from Dad's reloading bench and bought 
a 5lb. bag of powdered sugar. I started by laying a trail of sugar from the 
nest to a small pile of sugar, within two days I had the worker ants trained 
to scout the route several times a day, sugar or no. Next I mixed the sugar 
and 3F powder and put about 1/4c a day in the pile. It wasn't long before 
there was literally a 4 lane ant highway hauling "sugar" goodness to the 
nest. When I was about of mix I "sweetened" the mix by doubling the 3F and 
watched till the ants had hauled almost every grain to the nest.

At that point I dropped a lit match at the end of the caravan of sugar 3F 
coated ants and watched the fuse follow the industrious critters into the 
hole. In just a few seconds a bit more than a wisp of smoke began coming 
out, then a jet of smoke and burning ants started shooting out of the hive 
on a smallish pilar of fire. I backed off as I thought the nest would 
explode, HOPING it was going to that is but no, it just spit flame, smoke 
and burning ants for probably 15 mins before it slowed down to just a jet of 
smoke.

As the show started slowing down I looked up and noticed a fire was getting 
going in some weeds about 10' or so away and rushed over to stomp it out. 
Sure as apples float there was another flaming ant guyser. It sure kept me 
busy looking for more till everything died down completely.

Killed the nest dead but not as dead as Dad would've killed me if he'd found 
out.

Jer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Vida" <osan at netlabs.net>
To: "Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2011 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Fw: Fire ants


>I wonder how far down a strong hard-gamma emmitter will penetrate...
>
> On 12/9/2011 9:24 AM, Ron Childers wrote:
>> If that theory works, dry ice dumped in a poke hole or c02 should work. 
>> Seltzer water isn't good for much else except to ruin good Scotch. As we 
>> learned, propane is heavier than air.....
>