Word: ants
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...South knows few worse pests than the tiny fire ant, an uninvited guest that came up from South America nearly 50 years ago and settled down for a long visit.The little insects bite people raising painful lumps, attack livestock, nibble crops and foul up ex pensive farm machinery with their hard earthen nest mounds. For years nothing could check their spread; massive at tacks with chemical dusts and sprays all failed. Now it looks as if the Department of Agriculture has finally found an answer to the curse of the fire ants: still smaller ants that seduce the fire ants...
Social Parasite. Uruguayan scientists working for the department stumbled on the secret while they were searching for a fungus or a bacteria that might be fatal to fire ants. They discovered that in Uruguay, where the ants are native they are no serious problem. Often they are so weak that they build flimsy nests which wash away in the rain. This suggested not an ant killer but a social parasite...
...called lao khao, which burns with a fine blue flame when ignited. Their staple food is rice and pla raa-raw fish that has been allowed to rot for as long as six months. They also eat tarantulas drenched with fermented fish juice, bamboo shoots marinated in buffalo blood, ant eggs, fried bee larvae and tree lizards in chili sauce. These dishes are tasty, but they also contain liver flukes, hookworms and other parasites; as a result, fully 90% of all northeasterners suffer from one or an other debilitating disease. Government teams dose whole villages with worming medicines, distribute pamphlets...
...turned it face up. For the moment the forgot Karandas and the angry crowd; for the moment Bundie's attention was riveted only to the message scrawled in a nervous hand. He could almost hear the maker of that desperate writing speak the words: "Fool! Zair iss no time ant much danchur. I could not vait any longer, I vill call you again...
...artist's favorite images, plastic ice cubes filled with bolts or ball bearings, a signed shopping bag for a group show of what artists collect. It takes at least that much to entice jaded connoisseurs away from their collections of old Batman comic books and portable ant colonies. Meanwhile, the artists were busy nailing, gluing and boxing together things that are neither...