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The Situation:
I am a college student in Hawaii and I work in a dorm as a desk clerk oncall which means I get my room for free and I have to carry a pager one night a week and lusually one or two weekend days a month. Its Hawaii and therefore tropical which means lots of creepy crawly critters and the dorm is pretty open so there are tons of insects and if you walk the halls at night you can get a lot of variety.
The Event:
So tonight is my oncall night, been pretty quiet thought myself to be lucky. So at 1:30 the pager goes off and renches me from a beautiful sleep. Technically I have 5 min to answer a page and since the desk clerk paged me with a number i didnt recognize i was trying to gather my thoughts and a en and paper before returning the call. As I am reaching for the phone well before my 5 min are up the phone rings and its the desk clerk telling me that one of our residents has an ant infestation and he wants me to come do something about it. Its so bad he wants something done about it right away!
Now, I am thinking ant infestation as in there are tons of ants crawling all over this guys bed or something right? I mean its 1:30 in the morning so it must be pretty bad. I get to the guys room and there are like 5 or so little flying insects buzzing around the light fixtures. I am thinking you have got to be kidding me. I have dormed going on year 5 now. Currently in my room I have several comfortable spiders a moth or two, there was a narly roach that scurried for the window when i flipped on the light and we get termites flying around several times a semester and I am a very clean person! So I go and get some traps and some spray because there are a few little bugs buzzing around a light that he "hardly ever uses, but would really like to use tonight" After coming back with the spray he points out that there is also a trail by his closet. Again about 6-10 ants walking up the wall, hardly anything to write home about. Do to the program he is in I know he is new to the state, only been here about a month and probably not adjusted, but I cant help but shake my head in wonder.
My freshman year we had an ant problem in our dorm room and we sprayed and set out traps and all kinds of stuff. The ants were harmless but annoying, couldnt get rid of them not matter what we did. I reached up onto my shelf one night to grab my performance folder for the wind ensemble, I never used it for class only concerts, and to my surprise tons of ants, eggs, and other crap fell out of it = found the ant problem! Now that is an ant infestation, hahaha! And it was easily remedied once i cleaned it up.
So I am wide awake and in wonder in the middle of the night. I just dont understand how people get so worked up over a few harmless bugs. I guess I am used to it. If anyone would care to comment feel free, I think the situation is absolutly hilarious.
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Los Angeles
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Tue, September 5, 2006 - 10:42 PM.........I should mention I am the "vector control officer"(sounds important, huh?) for my county health dept. here in Tucson-you would not BELIEVE the mosquito complaints the day AFTER it rains......................
TOTALLY empathizing with you there.....
I am from central Minnesota-we dont HAVE a mosquito season in Tucson!!!!!!! -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Thu, September 7, 2006 - 4:22 PMi would much rather live with insects than pesticides. we evolved with insects, not with pesticides. which would be the more harmful to the human body, hmmm? -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Thu, September 7, 2006 - 7:12 PMWhat's another way to invite ants to leave? I'd like to know just in case, b/c I def don't want to breath pesticides just to get rid of ants -- unless they're killer ants capable of carrying me away from my home bodily.
;^*) -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Fri, September 8, 2006 - 2:48 PMdiatomacious earth and borax. you can get it/them at any garden center . sprinkle around structures and in areas where ants are not wanted (backs of cupboards, under the sink, outside around their nest). tiny animals in the earth eat away and cut/scratch the ants legs borax is a pretty general all around insecticide that kills most things as they track through it and take it back to their nests. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Mon, September 11, 2006 - 10:06 AMcinnamon (powder) and eucalyptus (oil) are also noxious to insects.
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Wed, November 29, 2006 - 8:44 AMadopt an ant eater as a pet
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Wed, September 13, 2006 - 9:39 AMPeople who freak out over a trail of ants have some kind of control issue.
I am reminded of the oblique characterization of Germans as having a collective personality disorder in the SNL 'Sprockets' segment 'Germany's Most Disturbing Home Videos'
Dieter narrates the video...
(very calmly)'A boy and girl have found the body of a tramp.'
(boy turns body over with a stick)
(now very excitedly)
'And look... ants!...ANTS!' -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Wed, September 13, 2006 - 10:03 AMthat's an interesting theory. i lived with someone who hated ants in the house and could not explain why. they don't carry diseases and are harmless. yeah they are mildly annoying but not nearly so much as a mosquito buzzing around your ear.
anyway i totally remember that sprockets episode. i think mike myers's character actually yelled the word ANTS like three or four times and they showed the dead tramp covered with ants at the same time. hilarious. then all that facetiousness turned into tom green a couple of years later. where he did real life skits like that. so our humor has become like the sprockets humor that we used to make fun of.
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Wed, September 13, 2006 - 2:17 PMWell, yeah, I agree that a few ants is not really anything to go nuts over, but some ants usually means a LOT of ants. I've never seen a few ants in my house that didn't lead to a Situation of Ants in my house, you know?
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Wed, September 13, 2006 - 8:07 PMi know, i once had ants living in the wall of my refrigerator. that was weird and out of control. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Thu, September 14, 2006 - 10:19 AMSpeaking as someone who knows what it's like to be noshed on by ants in my bed while asleep, I'm not wild about seeing ants inside my house. Nothing quite like waking up in the middle of dinner. Especially when YOU are the dinner.
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Fri, September 15, 2006 - 11:01 AMi guess it depends on the ants. i don't think the common sugar ants would try to eat me so i'm not concerned about them marching around my house. but if the ants were the type that would munch on me, i might be concerned. but really most insects aren't dangerous in the slightest even the ones that can bite and hurt a lil bit.
however, the only insects that really scare me (besides fire ants!) don't live around here. its the kissing bug, the one that gave Charles Darwin chagas disease (which he eventually succumbed to).
its not the lions, tigers, bears and ants you need to be afraid of its the protozoans they carry...
tinyurl.com/hnetk -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Fri, September 15, 2006 - 2:06 PMWell, while we do have fire ants here, I am pretty sure these weren't fire ants. All I know is they came though a seam in the wall, and got into our beds and our laundry that was sitting in the hamper to be washed. Apparently, they were attracted to the smell of skin. It wasn't just me, either, I had a room mate that lived down the other end of the house and they marched down there and ate on him, too. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Mon, September 18, 2006 - 6:11 AMIf you live in South Carolina then those pretty much had to be Argentine ants, which most Southerners call fire ants.
Of course, "fire ant" is a general term that is applied to different ouch-causing ants around the world. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Mon, September 18, 2006 - 9:51 AMfire ants = Solenopsis geminata
sugar ants = Camponotus sp,
they are totally different morphologically and behavior wise. sugar ants are non-aggressive and don't bite (and workers are all black and tiny), fire ants (dark brown in color with a range of worker sizes) are aggressive and fire ant bites have a lingering burning sting. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Fri, September 29, 2006 - 4:00 PMI've been bitten numberous times by tiny black ants invading my bed.
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Fri, September 29, 2006 - 5:04 PMwell my point is that "little black ant" is not a kind or species of ant. considering that there are probably 50,000 different ant species worldwide i challenge you to key out and id exactly what is biting you.
shit my cat bites me all the time and i don't want to spray her with cat killer. why are people so freaked out by a few tiny pests? sure they're a bit annoying at times, but they have just as much right to live as you or i. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Fri, September 29, 2006 - 10:19 PMWell, you'd think they were fire ants by their behavior, but living in South Carolina as I do, and being an avid gardener and outdoorswoman, I have been bitten too many times to count by fire ants. I have stumbled into nests of them and gotten myself downright hurt. Thank God I'm not allergic. I have literally, in the course of my life, probably had hundreds of stings. But fire ant venom is sort of similar to wasp venom (I have heard). It is excruciatingly painful and leaves fluid filled pustules, even if you aren't allegic. They climb all over you and then all start stinging at once, so that by the time you feel them on you, there are enough of them on you to really do some damage.
If fire ants had gotten into my bed, I think I'd have been far worse off than just being pissed off and bewildered. These things can kill people.
No, we woke up with ants biting us, but it wasn't like we were covered with them and all they did was sting a little. It hurt us enough to wake us up and send us cussing all around the house, but not enough to much more than that. I don't think they were fire ants. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Fri, September 29, 2006 - 10:30 PMYeah, I looked around a bit and I was right. The venom is like that of a wasp.
Check it out.
www.getipm.com/thebestcon...reants4.htm -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Sun, October 1, 2006 - 7:06 PM>Yeah, I looked around a bit and I was right. The venom is like that of a wasp.
If there's an actual entomologist here, please feel free to correct me..
I thought that ants were relatively recent phenomenon, descending from wasps. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Sun, October 1, 2006 - 9:47 PMBasically, ants are wasps. The order Hymenoptera includes the groups of creatures that we call ants, wasps, bees, and sawflies. Ants and vespoid wasps (this includes paper wasps) are sister groups. Together, these two groups are a the sister group of all other stinging wasps.
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Mon, October 2, 2006 - 8:58 AMthanks for doing the research guys. sorry i got a little testy there. i love ALL animals (yes i am even fascinated by tapeworm and i have a worm tribe if anyone else is interested) and can get a little defensive about them. btw, i was told in entomology class that the best way to discern the members of the order hymenoptera was the constriction they all have at their "waist" --in other words between their abdomen and thorax. ants definately have the constriction.
i thought that ants just had formic acid in their mouths. but do they also carry some other venom when they 'sting'? -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Mon, October 2, 2006 - 12:12 PMThe bent antennae are a giveaway also.
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Mon, October 2, 2006 - 9:48 PMI love to do the tapeworm lecture. It freaks my student right out. It is second only to the roundworm lecture. Muahaha. Anyway...
Sawflies do not have a constriction between their abdomen and their thorax but they are Hymenoptera. All other Hymenoptera do.
Ants in the subfamily Formicinae have poison glands in their abdomens that produce alot of formic acid but these and other ants have additional venom constituents as well. These include proteins and alkaloids. The "fire" of the fire ant's sting (various species in the genus Solenopsis) is actually caused by a group of alkaloids. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Tue, October 3, 2006 - 9:37 AM>>the "fire" of the fire ant's sting (various species in the genus Solenopsis) is actually caused by a group of alkaloid...
it makes so much more sense to me now as to why the fire ant stings are so painful and why people have allergic reactions to them.
eric...i <3 me some worms btw. please join my worm tribe. its too quiet around there and i'm the only one in it who's taken invertebrate zoology. :)
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Sat, September 30, 2006 - 1:41 PMants were never my bag, but I can assure you...if it bites me, it's toast, no matter what species it is. ;)
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Sun, October 1, 2006 - 7:03 PM>Speaking as someone who knows what it's like to be noshed on by ants in my bed while asleep, I'm not wild about seeing ants inside my house. Nothing quite like waking up in the middle of dinner. Especially when YOU are the dinner.
I agree with this. Despite my tolerance for domestic ants who quietly go about the business of cleaning up after us, I have been a rather rude guest in the wild. One time on a 1-month program in the Sierras when I was 17, I grew tired of being bitten by the big, big ants there. I finally followed them to a rock they were crawling under. Turning it over, I found several hundred larvae... which I ate.
The ants didn't bite me again anywhere, through the remainder of the course, which involved hiking 20 miles or more every day for 2 weeks
Coincidence? -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Sun, October 1, 2006 - 9:21 PMI think not.
Cool! I really respect a guy who will eat bugs. I have eaten a few myself. :-DDDD
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Mon, November 6, 2006 - 7:13 PMThat's funny. My girlfriend is an ant biologist so we love ants, even if they sting you (few ants have a bite that can even break the skin, what hurts is getting stung). But the giant colony outside our house was getting way out of control. When I finally saw the stream coming up the wall into the house I decided to do something. So I put poison around the many entrances to their colony. After a few days they stopped coming in, and they never have again, though the colony is still huge and thriving. In any case, they got the message. Now I am not one to believe in such things as colonial superintelligence but... ;-}
Oh and speaking of ants, Walter Tschinkel has made a number of amazing casts of real ant colony nests. Totally amazing. Some are in the figures at the end of this paper (scroll down)
tinyurl.com/yfndsx -
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Unsu...
Re: Stupid People and insects
Thu, November 9, 2006 - 11:37 AMbhall,
I was stung by Tongarana ants in the Peruvian Amazon last year and it was just about the worst sting I’ve ever felt. It surpassed bee and wasp stings by far. But it was also a learning experience for me: when you go to the jungle, you must watch where you put your hands. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Thu, November 9, 2006 - 6:39 PMouch! best to watch where you put 'some other stuff' too! ;-}
recently, while in the field, my gf got sprayed by a beetle. the fluid started eating away her skin and made these huge painful welts, really gross...and i know what you mean about ant stings being really bad. the ants in florida never bothered me, but i've gotten a few in the desert that hurt so bad i could hardly believe it... but the truth is, no insect will never receive more animosity from me than the mosquito. i can forgive the ants. I can never forgive those dirty blood sucking death flies!
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Unsu...
Re: Stupid People and insects
Thu, November 9, 2006 - 11:31 AMAnts ARE wonderful, clean, harmless little Communists, I agree. However, a couple years ago I lived in an older house that was surrounded by oak trees. As a result we would get terrible infestations of velvet tree ants, bad enough that I nearly lost all love for these little creatures.
When you look at pictures of velvet tree ants they seem so cute and innocent, but we had hordes of them, hundreds, and they would come in through cracks on one side of the ceiling in our living room, covering the walls, move across the ceiling, through a vent, and then across the ceiling in my daughter's bedroom. At that time I slept in a loft above the living room and I would wake up in the middle of the night covered in ants. My daughter would also wake with the insects falling on her from above. We would smell ants everywhere, and they bit too, which I did not realize velvet tree ants did.
To make a long story short, there was no way of escaping them during these infestations. They invaded our entire house. All we could do was keep all our food wrapped up tight and camp out on the deck--fortunately this only happened in the summer. And then, within a day or two, the whole lot of them would simply be gone. They would leave only the small corpses of dead sisters and their pungent, ant-smell. -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Wed, November 29, 2006 - 10:52 AM"recently, while in the field, my gf got sprayed by a beetle. the fluid started eating away her skin and made these huge painful welts, really gross"
This happened to a friend of mine, near as we could tell. She had some sort of beetle on her skin, and next thing we know she's got some sort of painful red welt on her arm where it was. We couldn't figure out what on earth happened with that. All sorts of weird hypothesis were put forth, but I couldn't find anything in my books about acid spraying beetles. Do you have any more info on this? -
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Wed, November 29, 2006 - 11:37 AMThat could be a bombadier beetle. They have glands with two chambers at their hind end One chamber contains a mix of hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide. The other holds a mix of catalase and peroxidase (both enzymes). When the beetle mixes the contents of the 2 chambers, the enzymes catalyze exothermic reactions. The oxygen from the decomposition of the hydrogen peroxide pressurizes the mix, which sprays out as a stream of hot, corrosive liquid.
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Re: Stupid People and insects
Thu, April 3, 2008 - 10:10 PMAre they actually ants? Winged ants are a sign of the colony splitting, which would indicate a very large colony somewhere in the house. Or there is a colony very close by and the winged females that were seen fluttering around the light have been exiled from the colony by the mature females, these winged females are looking for a mate. I live in Florida and we have a very large variety of Ants here, they tend to swarm in the summertime, and when we see them swarm it is in very large numbers. What ant have you found in Hawaii that is swarming so early?
contributing to the personal stories, I remember half of my bedroom being covered in ants when I lived in California. I jumped in to my bunk bed, partially because I did not want to step on any of them, and the shock of seeing so many scared me a little. I felt safe on the top of my bunk bed, they did not climb up. I watched them for about 30 minutes before calling my dad for a solution.
