Houston, Texas, longtime site of the fire ant scourge, is now inundated with a new pest known as the “crazy rasberry ant”. (The spelling of rasberry is correct: It refers to Tom Rasberry, a local exterminator who first identified it as a problem.) Thought to have arrived as a container ship stowaway six years ago, these tiny, flea-sized ants travel in amorphous swarms (hence the “crazy”). Their claim to infamy is their voracious appetite for electronic equipment—they have a reputation for shorting out gas meters, computers and electrical boxes wherever they go. People are understandably concerned that the ants will hit electronics-heavy areas such as Houston airport or NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Exterminators are finding it difficult to control these new ants because they are willing to uproot and seek out new digs at a moment’s notice, rendering poison bait ineffective. Also one colony has multiple queens, making it even harder to kill off completely.
The upside? Crazy rasberry ants apparently eat fire ants.