Burn Baby Burn

I could regale you with the tale of a sleepless night that ended with my husband's alarm, a foul curse and someone bursting into tears (perhaps the same person who uttered the curse).  Instead I will attempt to explain why my backyard is on fire.


Have I told you about our ant hill?  Or the ants that carried away Maisy's massive chunks of kibble?  Or the time Tom couldn't let Mad continue drawing with chalk on the back patio because the massive ants were stalking them?


We had originally heard we had army ants.  However, I looked them up and we don't.  We also don't seem to have the equally obnoxious honey ants that are common to our area. What do we have?  No one has answered that other than to say that the whole High Desert is built on an ant hill.  One thing I can say for sure is that these ants are pretty large.  If you were to stand well inside our kitchen and look out to the back of our yard (maybe 40 feet away), you'd easily be able to track an ant's movement.  Creepy!


We have tried several natural "remedies" to no avail.  Well, a couple attempts seemed to piss off the ants and bring them out in greater numbers, but mostly nothing happened.


Two weeks ago Tom resorted to an "eco-wise" chemical solution.  No change at all.


Today he went with his Dad's preferred remedy.  He poured lighter fluid (four quarts!!) into the ant hill and lit it on fire.  It burned for quite a while, naturally.  Tomorrow we are hoping to see a yard free of these critters.  But we're also a little afraid they'll have mutated and grown even larger and angrier.