Hi, here's something for your nightmares:
Crazy visual demonstration of why it's so hard to sink a floating fire ant colony https://t.co/oDOKt5Z5u5https://t.co/fKFOiXr3Ml
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) August 30, 2017
This is a topic of some interest right now because people are learning that ants do not drown when it floods. Oh no. They form little balls and float along with the floodwaters, moving whole colonies into brand new areas. Let me repeat:
THEY CANNOT BE KILLED BY WATER AND THEY FLOAT ALONG IT AND THEY ARE COMING FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN AND YOUR PETS AND YOUR SUCKER PUNCH BLU-RAYS.
Here's more on the ant menace from Ingraham:
"Floodwaters will not drown fire ants," explains Paul Nester, an extension specialist at Texas A&M, in a pamphlet titled "Flooding and Fire Ants: Protecting Yourself and Your Family." Instead, entire colonies of the aggressive biting insects — eggs, larvae and all — will "emerge from the soil, form a loose ball, float, and flow with the water until they reach a dry area or object they can crawl up on."
For the uninitiated, a fire ant resembles a regular ant in roughly the same way a wolf resembles a golden retriever. They're aggressive, territorial and venomous. Among vulnerable individuals, their stings can be fatal. "Most people hate fire ants without reservation," Florida State University entomologist Walter Tschinkel wrote in a book about the insects in 2006.
Mother of God.
Now look. I don't want to overreact here. There are a lot of problems in the world. Floods. Plagues. Nuclearized Norks. I get it. Lots of stuff going on right now.
But if we can't spare $287 billion (estimated) to wipe out the FLOATING DEATH BALLS OF ANTS then, honestly, what's even the point of being an unrivaled hyperpower with the power to destroy all life on planet Earth.
I'm just saying, we need to stay on top of the ant menace. Some steps we can take:
- Government-mandated flamethrowers in every house so fire ant colonies can be destroyed on sight by whoever first sees a colony, with mandatory flamethrower training for any child above the age of 8;
- Genetic engineering of a super-powered race of anteaters that go from town to town eliminating the fire ant threat; when the super-powered anteaters become a threat on their own, we release super-powered gorillas to defeat the anteaters;
- I dunno, like, super poisons?
You see the problem here: if you can't even drown these vicious little bastards, what are you supposed to do? I'm all ears. And if Trump won't step up to the plate here, well, by God, I might just have to throw my own hat into the ring. It's time we Make America Great And Also Ant-Free Again.