Cob: RE: I absolutely cannot believe this!

[Everhart, Gabe]

Kim,
I feel your pain.  Living in Floirida we have had more than our share of
battles with the Red Imported Fire Ant.  Have you considered that they may
have flown OVER the barrier?  Newly hatched young queens fly away to start
new colonies on whatever nice piece of earth they can land on.  I think
there are some males that can fly as well.

Don't know if people in South/Central America could offer that much advice -
the fire ants aren't as much of a problem down there, so I've read.  Too
much native competition.  They're much more pervasive here in the good ole
USA where they lack an army of natural rivals to keep them in check.  And
people just keep making the problem worse by spreading 'broadcast' poisons
over their property, which kills the fire ants, and everything else as well
- making it easier for the next crop of fire ants to take over again.  The
best defense against Fire Ants is a healthy, diverse entomological
ecosystem.  But don't get me started.

Sorry, no constructive advice here.  Perhaps Borax mixed into the cob? (or
something more deadly?)  Just a thought.  Of course you don't want to put
poison in the walls of your NATURAL home...

Gabe

Is entomological a word?


-----Original Message-----
From: Kim West [mailto:kwest at arkansas.net]
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 4:52 PM
To: Cob List
Subject: Cob: I absolutely cannot believe this!



OK. This is just unreal to me. I am hoping that someone here will have an
answer because I know without a doubt that people here have built, or are
building, in South and Central America. We live in the southern United
States and have imported fire ants that come from the regions mentioned
above. I noticed while doing the foundation that they love to immediately
inhabit the places that they assumed we were preparing for them--the trench,
the ditch, and even the rock walls that the mortar had not even hardened on.
They would be up and crawling around the mortar as soon as we got it in the
wall. We tried non-toxic methods to get rid of them to no avail. They
thrived on the stuff. So, I went and got a bag of 5% Diazinon that I knew
would do the trick. The ground level floor of the house is/was currently
just up to having the layer of washed gravel down to prevent water from
wicking up through the ground into the house, so when I did a perimeter
poisoning I also poisoned the ground floor area hoping that it would have
done its job and gone away before we moved in since it is supposed to be
gone in 6 weeks and it would be much longer than that. The perimeter
poisoning done it seemed to work great and we saw no more fire ants. We also
poisoned mounds we saw nearby.

As we built the cob walls I noticed that mold was growing about 3 days after
the cob was down so I started applying a layer of lime to stop the mold.
That worked fine also. When I left the cob uncovered it dried too
quickly--or it was getting wet from the rains when they came, so I started
putting hay on top of the lime and liming the top of the hay also. This also
served the purpose of keeping the dogs off the walls--once they got a whiff
of the lime they left. Now today, just before rushing in here to try and
find some help, I uncovered some of the older cob wall to make sure it will
be ready to receive the next layer, and what did I find? FIRE ANTS! Living
right there in the lime and cob! How they got across the poisoned perimeter
barrier I have no idea--the barrier goes at least five feet out from the
house and we have done it twice in the last 2 or 3 months. One of the boys
said that they went under everything and I have a hard time believing that.
If so, they started out 5 feet from the house, went down about two feet,
went horizontally underground for at least nine feet to clear the poison and
the cement bond beam, then came up in the cob somewhere that magically I
forgot to poison. I may be wrong, I'm not buying that!

NOW--Like I said, I know that there are people here who have built in
Central and South America where these imported fire ants came from in the
first place. Since they are building there they must have come into contact
with them and found ways to defeat the little devils. You can't have a cob
home with fire ants making their mounds in the cob. It turns a hard
compacted cob wall into a pile of grainy dirt! And these suckers are doing
it in poisoned and limed dirt. Please do not tell me that I should have
built the rock wall taller--these devils have climbed at least 8 feet to
make a home in an outside overhang above the bay window in the kitchen where
we are currently living. I'm at a loss. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT ARE/HAVE THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BUILT IN CENTRAL
AND SOUTH AMERICA DOING/DONE??????????