Fiery Invader

The South, long inured to red bugs, screwworms, rattlesnakes, alligators and other varmints, irritably recognized last week that it had a new pest on its hands: the fire ant.

Reddish and only 1/4in. long, the fire ant has a peculiar talent: it chews a slit in the skin of its victim, lifts the skin with its mandibles, curves its abdomen under its body and injects a dose of fluid which causes fiery pain, raises angry welts, and may form a pocket of pus. Victims highly sensitive to ant poison may be hospitalized for weeks; a baby in New Orleans was killed by the ants.

What is especially annoying is that the newcomer is a foreign import. Native to southern South America, the ant, brought in nobody knows how, established a beachhead near Mobile at least 30 years ago. Suddenly, three years ago, it began to multiply so rapidly that it now ranks as a major menace. Traveling partly in autos and trucks, the ants have spread their fiery trail through the South from Texas to North Carolina. Senators from Louisiana and Congressmen from Mississippi and Alabama have introduced bills in Congress asking for aid, and next week the House Agriculture Committee will open hearings aimed at finding ways to check the fiery invader.

The ants do not destroy any specific crop. Their way of life is to tunnel underground, excavating a nest of interlaced chambers and building a solid mound about a foot high. Their food is juices sucked from plant roots and stems, seeds, tender shoots, and any insects or animals that they can kill. They go for fledgling birds, and even kill them in their eggs before they have quite hatched. Most conspicuous damage is done to vegetables.

Worse than crop damage is the annoyance. Their mounds, thickly set in hay or grain fields, damage mowing and harvesting machines. They get into fodder and sting the cattle that try to eat it or the humans that handle it. In places where they are thick, farmers cannot get laborers to work in the fields. In suburbs they pock lawns with their mounds, bite children playing on the grass.

The Department of Agriculture does not think that the fire ants can be eradicated. They are too well established, and they live in forests and wastelands as well as in settled areas. No natural enemies have been found that can be imported to prey upon them. In spite of quarantines that may be declared against them, the ants will probably spread as far as climate will permit, perhaps as far north as southern Pennsylvania. But they can be checked in towns, fields and pastures by proper poisoning methods. This can be expensive. Said one disgruntled householder in Montgomery, Ala. last week: "When my monthly chlordane bill equals my house payments, I'm going to sell and move north."

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