[Groop] Me vs. Them (and Other Groo-ish Activities)

[Grossmann, Gary (DOR)]

Hi Folks!

First off, glad to see some of you got the "Them" reference.  Fun flick,
even though the ants kill Marshall Dillon.  

As far as how the Ant War goes, I'd say at the moment it's a draw.  I'm
still alive, but so are the ants.  Not nearly as many as there were
though.  I did pretty much everything to them except attack them with
toothpicks tied to my toes.  Groo would be proud.  

I dug them up. I relocated them.  I poured boiling water on what
appeared to be little satellites on the edge of the colony (urban
sprawl?)  The boiling water was spiked with sugar and borax (I read that
if you boil them together it works better) so when it cooled off it
hopefully killed more of them.  I dug the central hole deeper and wider
and then started a fire in it.  When the fire went out, I covered the
hole and most of the cleared area with plastic and smoked the whole
colony for several hours.  While that was going on I took a que from
"Them" and got out my acetlyne torch and incinerated the freeway of ants
that has been climbing up and down the giant Douglas fur next to the
colony (The bark is several inches thick and fire resistant.  Not so the
ants.) 

After all of this, there was still ant activity, although not nearly as
much.  Don't know if I killed the queen.  I still haven't run across any
more larve.  Tonight I will survey the scene and come up with a follow
up plan of attack.  It will no doubt involve more digging, more boiling
sugared borax, more fire and smoke, and (just because it's fun) more
acetlyne torching.  

Also, we discovered a couple little tiny ant hills on the opposite side
of my property (suburbs?) and I dropped a quart of ammonia into each
one.  They will get boiling borax and sugar tonight if there is any
remaining activity.  There also appears to be a tiny colony trying to
establish itself under my driveway slab, which has a very large crack in
it from an earthquake about 10 years ago.  They will get either boiling
sugared borax or I'll seal it up with cement.  Or both.  

In the midst of all of this, I tried to cut down a giant, completely out
of control, big leaf maple that is just a couple feet from my shed that
doubles a pump house.  The tree has 12 stalks that range in size from 6"
to darn near a foot in diameter and half of them lean to one degree or
another over my shed.  I am very good at getting trees to fall where I
want them to with my trusty axe and buck saw, but this presented a
special challenge which, it turns out, I was not quite up to.  I made
one miscalculation and...well, as Groo would say, "Did I Err?"   

Sorry for all of the non-Groo stuff, but it does seem to have some very
Groo-ish aspects to it...

Take care all (and stay away from ants and Big Leaf Maples) 

Gary G.  







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.newdream.net/pipermail/groop/attachments/20080623/4df07d14/attachment-0001.htm>