I wrote about cockroaches in this space two weeks ago. Myriads of readers found that topic charming and edifying, so this week I’ll write about fire ants. People who like reading about cockroaches will probably like reading about fire ants.

Cockroaches belong here, having predated human beings on this continent by millions of years. Fire ants, however, are carpetbaggers. They arrived in North America uninvited (white people arrived uninvited, too, but that’s another story).

The first fire ants on these shores came from South America in the 1930s, aboard a ship that docked in Mobile. From Mobile they spread all over the South until they now own the place. Actually, fire ants share ownership of the South with kudzu. You and I are allowed to live here as their guests, at their pleasure.

In the past, you couldn’t get rid of fire ants any more than you could get rid of cockroaches or kudzu. I once heard that if you poured grits on a mound of fire ants, the worker ants would take the little grains of alkali-treated ground corn down into the mound to feed to their queen. Once inside the queen’s stomach, the grits would expand until — Kapow! — her stomach exploded and she died. Then the grieving worker ants would run away to drown their sorrows in somebody else’s yard.

I tried that. It didn’t work. Neither does soaking the mound with chlorine or ammonia or gasoline (which can also contaminate the ground water).

You can sometimes get rid of a mound of fire ants by pouring several gallons boiling water into it, but that can kill plants, too, and you could burn yourself. And the ants would return a few days later.

A fire ant mound can extend as deep as five feet into the ground, so don’t try digging it up.

Some scientists are experimenting with a natural predator of fire ants from South America, the parasitic decapitating fly. These flies are not now available to the general public, and let’s keep it that way. I think I’d rather put up with fire ants than with parasitic decapitating flies.

But there is new hope for getting rid of fire ants. The Christian Science Monitor reports that a new species of carpetbagger formicidae (that’s the scientific term for ants) has arrived on our shores, and fire ants can’t stand them. Fire ants turn and run whenever a group (pack? flock? school? herd? gaggle?) of these new ants shows up on their turf.

They’re called “crazy ants” because of their herky-jerky gait. Crazy ants stepped off a ship in Houston about 10 years ago and since then have hitchhiked all over the South. They will soon be as prevalent here as fire ants and cockroaches are now. “The entire Gulf Coast is going to be inundated in a very short period of time,” said entomologist Tom Rasberry, who first identified crazy ants. Moreover, an acre of land can provide a home to billions of crazy ants. Also, they bite. The news just gets better and better!

So what to do? One friend is considering covering his yard with Astroturf. Astroturf gets scaldingly hot in direct sun, so I suppose neither fire ants nor crazy ants would choose it for a home site. And it might look pretty, or at least very green. But would you like a yard made of plastic (or whatever Astroturf is) that won’t grow an azalea or camellia or anything?

One of my religious friends (I’m religious, too, but not this religious) is praying that the Lord remove all unfriendly species of ants from her property. She says insect behavior is under the Lord’s command, citing the gnats and locusts inflicted on the Egyptians in the book of Exodus.

I look at it differently. If the Lord inflicts people with swarms of insects, maybe he sent fire ants here because Americans had been acting up, and maybe they flourish here now because we’re still acting up. I can think of lots of reasons the Lord might be displeased with our country, a topic I’ll leave for another day, but I suspect fire ants appeared here because they decided, of their own free will, to stow away on that boat that docked in Mobile 80 years ago. Leave the Lord out of it.

Richard H. Schmidt is a retired Episcopal priest, editor and author who lives in Fairhope. He can be reached at courier@gulfcoastnewspapers.com.