Maine and red ants (Rockland, Boothbay: environment, work, home)

[corgis]

What a couple of days this has been. One of my corgis, Samantha was in the fenced in back yard and sat on a red ant nest. She went crazy biting her back hip and flank, tearing out her hair and biting herself until she was dripping blood. I called the Vet at home yesterday morning and he said to give her Benedryl to stop the itching and try to clean her up with Peroxide. Today I took her into the Vet where they had to shave her back hip almost completely, gave her a steriod shot and antibiotic pills. She's going to be fine, she looks terrible but she'll probably start growing her hair back in the next few weeks and it'll be grown back in by Christmas or the first of the year.

The red ant nest was in the fenced in dog run - I never saw it or knew of it until this happened.

Guess my main reason for posting this is not only do humans get terrible itches from red ants but your animals really suffer terribly when the ants get them.

Eastport is really bad for red ants as well as skunks - the skunks are one thing but these red ants are really bad this year due to the wet summer we had, this according to the Vet.

So if your animal gets a "hot spot", check for red ant bites.

[RANGER.101ST]

we had a big ant mound this summer i took the backhoe and dug it up and loaded it on the truck and dumped it way at the and of my field put some brush on it and burnt it.

[JViello]

Wait...red ants as in the "fire ants" you see in the South that bite/sting and give you puss bubbles?

I was under the impression that us cold weather states don't get them. I never saw them until I lived in the South for a bit.

What am I missing?

[mollysmiles]

The red ants that we have in Maine can be traced back to England.... the idea is that they came over on a ship many, many moons ago. These ones don't give you puss bubble, just a mark that looks similar to a mosquito bite. I remember very vividly walking through some flowering bushes as a child and getting covered in red ants. They bite like crazy, and over and over. It's not actually the bite that causes the sting, but I don't think we need to get into all that. When I was growing up Eastport had a lot of them, but not like now. Now it's nearly impossible to go pick blueberries because the ants are so bad. I've heard that the black ants will over-run them, and will drive them away, but I've never seen it happen. They're nasty!

[RANGER.101ST]

my dad use to use a electric ground prob to get rid of them he would stick it in the ant hill and plug it in.

[maggiekate]

Originally Posted by corgis

What a couple of days this has been. One of my corgis, Samantha was in the fenced in back yard and sat on a red ant nest. She went crazy biting her back hip and flank, tearing out her hair and biting herself until she was dripping blood. I called the Vet at home yesterday morning and he said to give her Benedryl to stop the itching and try to clean her up with Peroxide. Today I took her into the Vet where they had to shave her back hip almost completely, gave her a steriod shot and antibiotic pills. She's going to be fine, she looks terrible but she'll probably start growing her hair back in the next few weeks and it'll be grown back in by Christmas or the first of the year.

The red ant nest was in the fenced in dog run - I never saw it or knew of it until this happened.

Guess my main reason for posting this is not only do humans get terrible itches from red ants but your animals really suffer terribly when the ants get them.

Eastport is really bad for red ants as well as skunks - the skunks are one thing but these red ants are really bad this year due to the wet summer we had, this according to the Vet.

So if your animal gets a "hot spot", check for red ant bites.

I am here from the North, and we have fire ants- here in florida I was trying to pick up
lawn stuff, and I did get blisters from them. they build a real big dirt pile, and
bite real bad! I am glad your dog will be ok.

[ZFcamaro]

Glad to hear your dog is ok, sounds like a tough ordeal to go through. I don't remember any fire ants growing up in Jefferson and around the Windsor area....

[Maine Writer]

How is Samantha today? Poor girl.

[corgis]

Interesting reading in the UMaine magazine for August, 2008.

Insights

Ants under fire


As if mosquitoes and black flies aren't enough, homeowners in some Maine communities now have to worry about an aggressive red ant from Europe that can deliver a nasty sting. The European fire ant, Myrmica rubra, has already caused problems in Eastport and Boothbay Harbor. The heaviest concentrations are on Mount Desert Island; the ants also have been reported in Castine, Rockland, Owl's Head and Cushing.

With support from a $75,000 National Park Service grant, University of Maine entomologists Eleanor Groden and Frank Drummond are working with two graduate students and David Manski, natural resources director at Acadia National Park, to understand what causes the ant to be such a problem in Maine and how it might be controlled.

The researchers are excavating ant nests and observing ant activity throughout the day and under various weather conditions. They also are asking homeowners for help in determining how far the fire ant has spread in Maine.

The ant is less than the length of a pencil eraser long, 1/8 to 3/16 inches, has a stinger at the end of its abdomen and can form dense colonies.

"They live in nests in the ground. You might see a few red ants on a leaf and then realize that they're on every leaf in the area and running up and down the trunks of trees," says Groden, an associate professor in the UMaine Department of Biological Sciences. The ants may not bother someone walking through a moderately infested area, but if an individual actually steps on their nests and or pauses too long, the ants may emerge to deliver their painful stings.

The sting of this ant is like a wasp sting, says Groden. The welt can be up to 6 inches across with a small white raised area in the center. Pain can last from a few hours to a few days.

The European fire ant is a separate species from the fire ants that have infested millions of acres of livestock pasture in Southeastern states from Texas to South Carolina. To date, the Maine invader has followed a course typical of non-native species. It appears to have adjusted gradually to Maine's environment but now has replaced native ant species at many sites. For example, most of the 80 infested sites that have been studied at Acadia have only the European fire ant. Areas where native ants are present have multiple species co-existing.

"To the best of our knowledge, the first confirmed reports of this ant species in Maine came from Eastport in 1952," Groden says. "Problems were reported in the 1960s and 1970s in individual yards, but it wasn't until the 1990s that it began to cause problems on a community-wide scale."

European fire ants were first reported in the United States at Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum in Boston in 1908. Visiting there last year, Groden and her colleagues found that the ants are still present but have not formed the aggressive colonies that they have at sites in Maine.

The ants have been reported in the Buffalo, N.Y. area, and are native throughout Europe from Britain, Scandinavia and Russia to countries on the north border of the Mediterranean. However, they have not become pests in the vast majority of their native range, and Groden and her colleagues would like to understand why.

UMaine scientists are considering three possibilities. Other ants in those locations could out- compete the fire ants for food and/or nesting sites, or a pathogen such as a fungus could be keeping them in check. It also is possible that the fire ants in Maine originated from a particularly aggressive population that is not widely distributed elsewhere.

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The article specifically mentions Eastport and Boothbay Harbor as having problems with red ants.


Samantha has a restless night so I put her on the bed with me on a towel because the area around her hip is still 'weeping'. The shaved area is beginning to crust over, which is a good sign. She had an antibiotic in cheese for breakfast and is now asleep beside me. She will be in really good shape in about a week, she'll just look terrible until her hair grows back.

[mollysmiles]

ohhh.... poor baby! At least the healing is in the works....

Interesting article, it's too bad that it's taken this long for them to look into the problem. They can spread easily from community to community, and while it may take them a few years to really be noticeable in a new area, they're very, very difficult to extinguish.