How to Kill Your Grass

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a huge fire ant mound in the yard. First I sprayed it with Raid and when it didn't work, I googled "how to kill fire ants." It said I needed to dig up the mound, destroy the nursery, and poison the whole thing. Well I found something more powerful than the Raid and thought I did all of that. The little dead ant carcasses all over the sidewalk were convincing evidence, but several days later, though the grass was completely dead on that area, and new little mounds started popping up all over the yard. I don't seem to have any luck getting the weed killer to kill weeds, but since the bug killer completely annihilated the grass, maybe I should use weed killer on the ants and see what happens. It has been a constant battle of me against the army of fire ants.

Yesterday I went to Lowes and bought a large bag of fire ant poison guaranteed to start killing them within minutes. I went to town sprinkling the granules all over and around the mounds and watched to see what would happen. I expected to see the little suckers just fall over as they walked through the poison, but that did not happen. No, turns out, I should have read the instructions in advance because I was supposed to pour water over the granules to activate them. done! If only I had taken that route in the first place.

Today my son yelled for me to come look at the mound. He said the ants were laying eggs all over the place. It turns out that what he was seeing as eggs were actually balled up dead ants. Hundreds of them! I got all excited that the poison had worked, and as I smugly leaned in for a closer inspection, I felt little pin pricks all over my feet. There was a swarm of un-dead fire ants attacking me! I guess they were just using the dead ones as decoys.

I'm starting to see some parallels between the fire ants and my sinful nature. I try to fix things my way and ignore that God already has the perfect formula for healing me. I take short cuts, and I don't take God's Word seriously in my life. Then before I know what's happening, the meanness, backbiting, and anger just multiply exponentially and take over. You're all shocked that I'm a mean, angry person, I know, but it's true. God's grace is the only thing that keeps me from going over the edge most days.

Back to the ants, I'm all out of ideas. Maybe it's time to buy some hip waders for the kids to wear in the yard and just let them take over.