Australian garden insects with Denis Crawford
Many people, especially gardeners, only see ants as pests, but they couldn’t be further from the truth. These days I work weekends in a garden centre, and when summer arrived every second customer I encountered wanted a product to kill ants. One person even asked me for the “Agent Orange” of ant insecticides! They were somewhat bemused when I asked “What sort of ants are they, and why do you want to kill them?”
It happened one day at primary school back in the 1960’s. “It’s biting me, it’s biting me!!” the boy screamed as he sprinted past me. He then collapsed on the ground in flamboyant B-grade movie style, shrieking loudly. I ran up to him and could see the culprit clinging to his leg, a very large but harmless moth which I now know it to be one of the ‘rain moths’ of the family Hepialidae (below).
Ouch!! I felt a sharp stabbing pain on the webbing between two fingers of my left hand. I looked down to see a Jack Jumper ant gripping my skin tightly with its mandibles and burying its sting in my flesh. I had been winding a hose back on its reel, the ant had taken a ride on the hose, became caught in my hand and went into attack mode. Ever been stabbed by hot needles? That’s what it feels like. Continue reading Stingers
