C’est Vrai: The weevil and the ant

Apparently the boll weevil is in good part responsible for that gang of fire ants that infests your yard and sneers at you when you try to kill them.
As any cotton farmer knows, the weevil is a tiny beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. It migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 1800s and quickly began to do terrible damage to the cotton crop all across the South. Some scientists say that the weevil has been the single most destructive pest in the history of U.S. agriculture.
The weevil originated in South America, so it appears that scientists who were fighting its early spread decided to look there for a natural enemy. Studying up on it, they found out that big red ants just loved to eat weevils, so they caught some and turned them loose in Texas.
It appeared to work. The Abbeville Meridional reported in October 1904 that federal agricultural authorities in Washington had announced that “there has been no loss of the ants which were brought to Texas from Guatemala. … The department declares the ants are doing well, eating their fill of the pest.”
According to the newspaper, “This will be pleasant news to Texans, who are interested in the ant because it is thought it will kill boll weevils” but it also pointed out that the experiment “will also be interesting to others who have studied the principals of the survival of the fittest.”
As we have found out, fire ants are survivors. Not only do they eat boll weevils, but a whole lot of other stuff. According to scientists at the U.S. agriculture department, today we spend more than $5 billion annually for medical treatment of bites, crop and other damage caused by them, and control of the ants. The ants cause $750 million in damage each year chewing up crops and attacking livestock. Swarming ants can kill small animals and can sting humans like the devil.
(Something new I just learned: The ants bite just to get a good grip on you. Then they stick you with a stinger full of poison.)
And it appears that the boll weevils were survivors, too. The ants feasted on them, but the weevils kept spreading—so much so that by 1915, a state convention of cotton growers adopted a resolution calling for no cotton at all to be planted in Louisiana for a year.
The Donaldsonville Chief was one of the Louisiana newspapers endorsing the plan, saying that it was the only way to get rid of the weevil infestation in the state.
Planting corn instead of cotton for a year, the newspaper argued, would also have the effect of diversifying the state’s agriculture, and would push up the price when the next cotton crop was planted.
As one large farmer argued, even if the planters took a bit of a loss in 1915 by not growing cotton, it would be no worse than the losses already brought on by bugs and exhausted land, and “as they will have no boll weevil and a good price, they could easily pay any balance they might owe [when the 1916 crop came in].”
As we know, that didn’t work, either, and it was not until the invention of DDT and other chemicals years later that farmers finally were able to all but eradicate the weevil.
The fire ants, meanwhile, continue to make a good living on the farm and have spread their depredations into town, and our back yards.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.