Very angry fire ants

Texas Horned Lizards which used to be fairly common have almost been exterminated by fire ants and development. Their populations do seem to be fairly fragile. I have not seen a single one since I moved to Texas and even the harvester ants on which they prefer to feed are no longer common. Fire ants invade the nests of most reptiles and I'm thinking that probably why some of the turtles ( ie Box turtles) are gradually declining too. Always super sad to find a mama turtle sitting in a hole trying to lay her eggs while damn fire ants swarm all over her. Soft shells seem especially vulnerable and I have rescued several for such situations....Mel

Yup, cow ant. I didn't know they were wasps. Cool.

@shotgunner- when we were kids hanging out in the palmettos, we hears stories of how they would cover cows, kill them and devour them in like an hour. Obviously stories, but it worked to keep us away from them!

We had big whitish fuzzy velvet ants back in Commiefornia too. Looked like that fight promoter, Don King?, having a bad hair day. Those boogers are equally nasty stingers. Oddly, used to encounter a lot of velvet ants in the ground while digging poppy jasper up at our Hunters Valley ranch.....Mel

Too hot here Scott according to article. at that price I should give it a go.
I should order some plants in.

Ever heard of a broad headed skink ? Was with a bunch on crotch rockets back in my 20's in Florida.
We were under influences in a bad way. Stopped at a rest area and behold, a foot long br headed skink dashed up feet in front of us and gobbled up an anole.
Our minds were quite damaged by the incident. It was a viscous attack and made sounds as he devoured the poor lizard.
Rarely see them in Georgia, darn common in Florida.

Yeah, texas box turtles live in open country....

You never show pix of the native box turtles?

Males have yellow orange red and red eyes. Females blah, just like humans

She is solid. But also last week.

I have been in demand lately...

Monkey biz

Fire ants were a true ally to me in the aquatic plant business back when.
In constructing quarter acre growing fields I under-layed them with geo-textiles at a fair cost before covering with gravel to block fire ant intrusion.

Standard in this plant industry is to use .040" EPDM rubber in a wood box to hold water to grow aquatic plants in.
Well, I had many curious visitors wanting to build growing facilities to compete with me.
Including a couple of large Dutch operations moved into Georgia. They could have put me out of business in a year.

i.e. Let's go purge the dumb southern boy for information and blow him out of the water.

I showed them all my stuff and and omitted one little tid bit of proprietary information, the hidden geo-textile under-layment.

They were in for a big surprise.
EPDM that has sat on the ground without protection from fire ants LOL:



Only to find out that within a few months their crop was drying out from thousands of holes in their liners.

So I love my fire ants.