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Getting fire ants to say ‘uncle’
Karen Hunter-Rose dips a Spam-filled ant trap into alcohol to kill collected ants Thursday. She is trapping ants around Jackson County as part of a project to determine whether fire ants have moved into the area. She’s collected many ants but has found no fire ants so far. Imported pests fall prey to traps filled with Spam By Paul Fattig For the fierce creature it’s supposed to capture, the trap doesn’t look like much. The plastic mesh is shaped like a large thimble. And the bait is nothing more than a small cube of Spam. But Karen Hunter-Rose has studied her prey. The trap will do its job, she says. "It doesn’t have to be very big," said the Central Point resident. "It’ll attract them if they’re around." The "them" she refers to are ants. But the biological survey technician for the state Department of Agriculture isn’t looking for your average tiny uninvited guest to a summer picnic. Her prey is imported fire ants. Ants attracted to the ant picnic are captured and sent to a state laboratory where entomologists determine whether there are any fire ants among the Spam munchers. No fire ants are known to exist in Oregon. But they were found in a railroad car in Salem in the early 1990s. The ants, discovered in a shipment of cottonseed, were immediately fumigated. This marks the first survey since 1993. A native of South America, the fire ants were discovered in Alabama in 1918. Since then, they have spread to the southwestern United States and southern California. "They’ve even found them in the San Joaquin Valley," she said. "If any material has been brought in for building from those areas where they’ve been found, they could spread here." Although the ants favor a warm climate, studies suggest they could survive throughout the Northwest, according to Kathleen Johnson, entomologist in charge of the department’s plant, pest and disease program. In addition to aggressively attacking humans with painful stingers, fire ants are also a threat to crops, Johnson noted. The traps being set in Western Oregon are placed in high-risk areas, like large landscaped developments less than five years old, sites where goods, machinery and vehicles from infested areas congregate, and nurseries. Thursday found Hunter-Rose checking traps set adjacent to a trucking facility in Central Point. By the end of the month, she will have trapped ants at 50 sites in Jackson County. Another trapper is setting traps at a couple of dozen other sites in the county. "I’ve never seen a live fire ant," said Hunter-Rose who, by virtue of having operated a pest control business in the Rogue Valley for years, is known as the Bug Lady. "And I don’t ever want to see one," she added. "They are nasty. They can sting repeatedly." Although they are small, about the size of the odorous house ants commonly found in the region, they attack en masse, she said. When checking traps, Hunter-Rose picks up each ant trap with steel forceps, then dips the trap in a container of alcohol. The ants are dead before their Spam is digested. "The alcohol preserves them," she said. "We send them to Salem to have an entomologist look at them to see if we have any fire ants." Accompanying each sample is information about the site where the ants were found. "If they find that any are fire ants, they will come back to the area and do some very intensive surveying," she said. Hunter-Rose has used one can of Spam to bait the traps she has set at 30 sites thus far. "We put out 20 traps at a site, then come back and check them in about a half hour," she said. "We always get some kind of ants." But, so far, none of the fiery kind. |
