#525 – Halt

There’s an ant hill in my front yard that I can’t get rid of. Every year it gets a little bigger. I think in 20 years they will have taken over the whole yard. What I really hate about it is sometimes when I’m out mowing the lawn I’ll accidentally step in it. They hate that part as well.

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56 thoughts on “#525 – Halt”

  1. Josh says:

    Ah, Biff. He always plans each potential contigency in the most elaborate and time-consuming way possible. That’s why we love him so.

  2. FSOneblin says:

    hehe, Nice. I hope he doesn’t step in it. Hay chris, If you want to get rid of it, Why don’t you “accidentally” mow it. It is a bit crewel, and it might hurt your mower, but it might work…

    Don’t Panic: FSOneblin

  3. Bojangles says:

    he should set up a laser perimeter w/ mirrors and a magnifying glass πŸ˜€
    *Also first post, long time fan*

  4. Krasno says:

    My suggestion: poison it and let time destroy it. Use garden friendly poisons, but try not to pull a Biff while doing it πŸ˜›

  5. Jackson says:

    Hahaha! Good one–the tweezers are a nice touch. At this rate, Biff will probably need to plan his picnic at least a day in advance…

  6. Kbman says:

    I used to destroy one of our sprinklers every time I mowed the lawn.
    Our old lawn mower was kind of low, but our new one can go over sprinklers with no destruction.

    Also, Gravatars FTW.

  7. Just Ryan says:

    I’ve found that flooding a anthill with a water hose does quite well for ant removal…or you could spray pesticide in a circle around it, then spread a ring of honey just outside the circle of pesticide…oh the possibilities of ant torture.

  8. Heinrich says:

    nice. another website update.

    and yeah… biff would.

  9. Heinrich says:

    man… it didn’t post my gravitar

  10. Fafnir13 says:

    Ugh….of all the creatures I’ve ever encountered on this planet, ants are the only ones I have a pathological dislike for. Probably has something with them invading my room when I was a kid.

  11. Micah says:

    Those look like they used to be bottle caps.

  12. insertnamehere says:

    destroying ant nests? *innocently walks away from grade 5, which was NOT spent wrecking an ants nest. which we never managed to finish* hmm… my turn to contribute a way to kill them! It must be Brave! Bold! Outlandish! … … … I’ve got it! spray a big ‘X’ on the nest, then wait for your pirate buddies/ play pirates with your friends.*

    *may require a time machine to go back to when you were little and still played ppirates on a regular basis.

  13. Chivalrybean says:

    We have these giant ants around here. They only invade one or two at a time, but when writing an email at night and they show up on your screen, then later take a blitzing rush at your arm, all only in the dim monitor light, it can get scary. It made for some funny random comments in the email about ants though.

  14. Eleanor says:

    Haha! Nice. We tend to have to de-ant every year or so with a kettle full of boiling water down the hole in the patio.

    On another note, anyone know which comic the top banner is?

  15. kAGEDVIPER says:

    we get fireants every year, and they are not fun at all….
    we wind up just spraying the hills with enough poison to spray the 1/3 of the yard… works nicely XD

  16. Alcadeius says:

    I’ve found fire to work with ant hills.. but i dunno who keeps kerosene anymore….

  17. I always used to pour gasoline on hills and then light them on fire. The gasoline by itself kills the ants pretty quickly, but it’s still cool to glass an anthill.

  18. Carpaccio says:

    I had pavers in my old house’s yard. There were ants in like, every second crack of them. It was absolutely dreadful getting things out of the shed.

  19. steve-o says:

    I once unkowingly stepped in a fire ant hill with bare feet. I was distracted talking to someone in the street. I felt a little pain on my foot, and another one on my leg, and I was thinking “what?”. Then the real pain started with hundreds of little fire ants all over my legs. By then it was too late. The next day, I ran outside and generously applied poison to even the smallest anthill. I used up half the 1 and a half foot tall bag on the previously mentioned hill. Sweet, sweet revenge.

    Never put biff in charge of an anthill. The ants would soon be rising up to kill him.

  20. PlutoBum says:

    i’m surprised he hasn’t gotten one of those stuck on his nose!

  21. Andara Bledin says:

    Ah, the insidious ants…. We have them attempt to invade semi-regularly.

    Also, when young, I also had a run in with a fire ant hill while barefoot. All I can remember from the incident is one ‘snapshot’ of me on my bed, on my back, waving my feet in the air and crying. Hey, I was 5, and even now I bet I’d cry with that many ant bites on my feet!

    Unless you live near a waterfowl breeding ground, get some Ortho Sevin Dust. The stuff is amazing. It’s totally garden safe, and aside from the afore-mentioned waterfowl thing, it’s almost entirely harmless to vertebrates (people, pets, anything land-dwelling that isn’t a bug).

  22. Hyshinara says:

    aparently, when it are black ants, it works really well to stick a tube in the ground pretty deep and go all flametrower on their asses πŸ˜›

    if it’s only grass, you could try that πŸ˜›
    you’ll have a black spot though :/

    anyhow, it’s all a matter of “kill the queen”
    i saw someone on NGC who made a special shotgun round that you shoot in the ground en explodes aproximate to the general depth of the queen

  23. Murudai says:

    A while ago I actually bought a mini trap like that one.

    It was really cool. You could set it up and everything, and catch tiny things πŸ™‚ It was marketed as a ‘mosquito trap’ πŸ™‚

  24. THawk says:

    Biff is so patient.

    A great cure for ants is to get a small plastic container with a lid. Poke a few holes in the sides along the bottom. Put an equal mix of sugar and Borax (powdered laundry booster) in the container and place the container by the ant hill. No more ants in a few days.
    *** Do not use this method if you have kids, dogs, or cats in the area that you want to keep around ***

    For ants in the house, I use CIL’s Ant Out spray. I had so many ants in the kitchen you could see the ant train. I sprayed their path and under along the baseboards with the “stream” setting, then sprayed the floor with the “spray” setting. I’ve seen 3 ants in 5 months now πŸ™‚

  25. Jon M. says:

    A friend of mine had a bunch of his ants coming out of his driveway in a line to his lawn so we doused them with gasoline and I got to throw the match on one end of the gas line. It made a satisfying woosh and blazed towards his lawn, stopping where the gas stopped. It wasn’t until that point that I realized that I’d always wanted to throw a match onto the end of a line of gasoline. Check that one off the list! πŸ™‚

  26. MaskedMan says:

    Picnic week…?

    Is Biff the descendant of Rube Goldberg? Or maybe the *creation* of Rube Goldberg..?

    best thing I know for ant colony destruction is boiling water. Water, by itself, isn’t sufficient, quite often. Boiling water also does a *real* number on those pesky weeds growing through the cracks in your driveway and sidewalk.

  27. Gobbledegook says:

    I used to live in Florida, land of the fire ants.
    Whenever we had a picnic, we were also forced to prepare for war.
    Hoses always worked the best for us, as well as shoving a pesticide pellet into the center of the hill with a stick.

  28. Gato says:

    Hope it doesn’t suddenly snap shut on his nose…..

  29. Joenvartija says:

    Best way to get rid of ants, is to hit ironpole through their nest in autumn and when winter comes, cold will take care of ants. Remember to perform this before ground is iced. This is cheap, effective and painless way to get rid of them, unless you live in warm place πŸ™‚

  30. Fullmetal89 says:

    In my opinion, a good way to get rid of ants is to go to an exotic pet shop, get an anteater, fence off an area around the hill in question, and just get a camera and record. Expensive? Oh yes. If you’ve suffered for years on end…is it worth it? Oh very much so. The earlier comment about glassing the ant hill brought a tear to my eye, by the way.

  31. no name says:

    Oh boy! I hope it’s another theme week. Those look like the would never catch an ant . . . maybe a roach.

  32. PsychoDuck says:

    Wicked new layout, Chris. And I’ve never known Biff to be so morbid… Not that this has any chance of working, though πŸ˜›

    The Duck Has Spoken.

  33. Roadkiller says:

    I heard a method for ant removal that sounds entertaining a while back. Put a pile of smokeless gunpowder next to the entrance. Out of instinct, they’ll take it inside. Do that for four or five days. On the last say, switch to black powder and watch. Wait until they’ve got about half of it inside and light the pile on fire. It should act as a fuse to the smokeless powder. Boom! No more ants, and, if you’re lucky, the hill will collapse also.

  34. trevor says:

    Qoute from Josh:Ah, Biff. He always plans each potential contigency in the most elaborate and time-consuming way possible. That’s why we love him so.
    Biff is a teacher?

  35. Wizard says:

    TANNERITE!

    (Sorry, it’s a running joke at a forum where I hang out; in this case, it might even work. If you don’t know what Tannerite is, Google it.)

  36. Kamorth says:

    Just don’t do what my Dad did to get rid of the giant underground wasp nest on our place when I was a kid, although watching geysers of flaming petrol suddenly appear all over your lawn is kind of amusing….

  37. trevor says:

    I never had to take care of an ant hill, but I’m creative, so I bet I could think of some pretty amusing ways to get rid of them….

  38. AdmiralChaos says:

    I’d like to see one of Biff’s Rube Goldberg projects πŸ˜€

  39. trevor says:

    I think that would end up with a crashed car, a fallen tree, a ruined circusm, and some lemons.

  40. Hey, nice website update! The best part of the update, I think, is that Biff’s at the top. The last design had other people’s logos at the top(in the form of ads), making me think I had the wrong site at first. Is my toolbar leaking, or is someone urinating on Biff?
    Better width and Gravatars for the win.
    Also, I don’t believe there was a Twitter box last time. Gotta watch you…

  41. Chris says:

    Yeah, I’m enjoying seeing the gravatars that people have. πŸ™‚

  42. Dzelda says:

    Lol, I remember when I was a kid ants attempted to invade the house near Christmastime. They were crawling all over a corner of the floor. me being the creative genius I am, made a machine out of Knex called the “Smasher” and ended up crushing every single little ant to death. My mom didnt even need to use poison. Glassing anthill and boiling them alive may sound fun, but its just as fun to take them out one by one.

  43. Rhiannon says:

    My dad uses gasoline to get rid of ants. It sure stinks, but it sinks down into the ground and suffocates those little buggers. Also, I think it’s illegal. Lighting the gas is optional.

  44. Widdershins says:

    Ants taking over your yard…

    Ever read ‘City’ by Clifford D. Simak?

  45. jordan says:

    some ants made a nest in a dead squirrel in our yard once, and then when we went to clean it up, we all got bit. so we lit the squirrel on fire. it worked really well. the coolest way i can imagine to clear an anthill though would have to be to drill a hole down with one of those long drill bits, and drop an m80 in the hole.

  46. Zaffa says:

    I once totally smashed an anthill by making a little machine that used a car tire to totally mash it up. Sand and ants ewere flying through the air.

  47. That other guy says:

    Wow, I have been playing Gears of War almost nonstop recently, so all this talk of destroying ants and undergound nests really makes me want to go build an explosive and annihilate any insect i see now…

    Btw, jordan’s idea for the m80 would be a lot of fun, but picture about 5 inch long tube filled with heavily compressed black powder and jamming it deep beneath the anthill (from the side)… I would love to see it shoot up then implode.

    MWA HA HA HA HA

  48. Hmm… I prefer not to interfere with the nature’s course, unless it comes to my territory in an invasive manner. And that’s what has happened to you, so here’s my attempt to help.

    Proven to function method that doesn’t involve explosives or dangerous chemicals that would poison the ecosystem…

    Boiling water in poured in large doses on the ant hill several times. You’ll burn and drown ants by the thousands.
    The queen resides in the deepest parts of the ant hill, which is why you have to pour lots of boiling water many times. Otherwise the water might not reach deep enough to kill the queen. When the queen is dead, the colony usually breaks up or leaves.

  49. Wendy says:

    Fire ants crawled all over me as a kid when I sat outside to tie my shoes, so I hate ants. A friend of mine likes to stick them onto sticky notes. Amusing, but a waste of paper.

  50. audrin says:

    yes.
    my teacher had the same problem.
    she hired me to get rid of the ants that were scareing her horses away. gasoline is usually the best method
    dangrous though

  51. Calypzo says:

    We always use cloves. We just put them around the edges of the room, or infront of a door. I suppose you could sprinkle some into/onto the anthill.

    Anyway, I this’ll even get seen, but oh well.

    Also, first time poster, but I’ve been reading about a week or two. Started from the first and been going through. Forgot how I got here. πŸ™

  52. YukiSnowflake says:

    im surprised that biff isnt in league with the ants…
    …their antennae might remind him of his eyebrows.
    …or his grandma…
    pfft.. i wonder what his grandma looks (*looked*) like?
    on a more related topic… (too many dots)
    in manchester we used to get flying ants in all of the houses, schools, everywhere, in june, july, august.
    we only get normal ants here in the 10-miles-from-the-rest-of-civilisation Meliden.
    But, we had to stick TALC around the house to stop them, because my mother hated killing things.
    It worked, and now theyre just everywhere outside.
    Good thing i never go out barefooted. πŸ˜€

  53. BrainpanSonata says:

    Lysol. Kills ants every time. Though I’m pretty sure it’s not just the chemicals that do it, but also the puddle big enough for them to drown in.

  54. Tech says:

    hose the thing.

  55. Rik says:

    I’m just imagining him sneezing and one of them snapping onto his nose

  56. fatemaster1 says:

    If you must kill ants in your yard, water should be sufficient, just add enough to drown them all. Personally, I’ve always liked ants, probably because they don’t bite me, ever. I think my body must be emitting the same pheromones as them or something because they really won’t bite me at all. In fact, ants are pretty much the only insects I do like.

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