June 9th, 2008
#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.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Ah, Biff. He always plans each potential contigency in the most elaborate and time-consuming way possible. That’s why we love him so.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:18 am
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
June 9th, 2008 at 12:19 am
he should set up a laser perimeter w/ mirrors and a magnifying glass
*Also first post, long time fan*
June 9th, 2008 at 12:28 am
My suggestion: poison it and let time destroy it. Use garden friendly poisons, but try not to pull a Biff while doing it
June 9th, 2008 at 12:34 am
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…
June 9th, 2008 at 12:57 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:47 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:51 am
nice. another website update.
and yeah… biff would.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:57 am
man… it didn’t post my gravitar
June 9th, 2008 at 2:31 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:09 am
Those look like they used to be bottle caps.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:33 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:51 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 5:14 am
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?
June 9th, 2008 at 5:16 am
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
June 9th, 2008 at 5:20 am
I’ve found fire to work with ant hills.. but i dunno who keeps kerosene anymore….
June 9th, 2008 at 5:23 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:04 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:25 am
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:26 am
i’m surprised he hasn’t gotten one of those stuck on his nose!
June 9th, 2008 at 9:53 am
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).
June 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am
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
if it’s only grass, you could try that
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
June 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am
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
It was marketed as a ‘mosquito trap’ 
June 9th, 2008 at 10:06 am
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
June 9th, 2008 at 11:42 am
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!
June 9th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Hope it doesn’t suddenly snap shut on his nose…..
June 9th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
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
June 9th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Oh boy! I hope it’s another theme week. Those look like the would never catch an ant . . . maybe a roach.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Wicked new layout, Chris. And I’ve never known Biff to be so morbid… Not that this has any chance of working, though
The Duck Has Spoken.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
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.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
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?
June 9th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
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.)
June 9th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
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….
June 9th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
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….
June 9th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I’d like to see one of Biff’s Rube Goldberg projects
June 9th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I think that would end up with a crashed car, a fallen tree, a ruined circusm, and some lemons.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
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…
June 10th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Yeah, I’m enjoying seeing the gravatars that people have.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
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.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
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.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Ants taking over your yard…
Ever read ‘City’ by Clifford D. Simak?
June 11th, 2008 at 9:47 am
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.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
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.
June 14th, 2008 at 12:48 am
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
June 16th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
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.