NASA moves to save computers from swarming ants

The Johnson Space Center referred all questions about the ants to Rasberry.

The ants, which are tiny and reddish, aren't native to Texas. Officials believe they came off a ship from the Caribbean, said Paul Nester, a program specialist for the Texas AgriLife Extension Service. They were first spotted about six years ago.

Gold said in the past few years, they've spread in a radius of about 50 miles. And now they're moving into Houston, the fourth largest city in the country.

"Fifty miles might not seem like a lot until you realize they're moving into Houston," said Gold. "It could really affect a lot of people's lives."

A big problem, noted Nester, is how quickly their numbers are multiplying.

A queen fire ant, long a problem in Texas, can lay as many as 1,000 eggs a day, he said. The Crazy Rasberry ants are thought to be as prolific. However, an ant mound normally has one queen. The new ants have many queens, so they're able to multiply their ranks that much more quickly. They also don't go to the trouble of building ant hills. They simply nest under anything they can find — a log, a tire or a pet's water bowl — and then they quickly move on and spread further.

Nester said the ants swarmed into trucks at a shipping company, shorting out the radios and even some of the vehicles themselves.

Gold said the ants got into an engine compartment at a sewage treatment plant and shorted out the pumps so they couldn't move the sewage out. He added that they've also overrun a subdivision and caused a lot of electrical damage to houses there.

Part of the problem is that exterminators have found it nearly impossible to kill the ants. Oh, you can kill some of them — the first wave, maybe. However, there are so many more ants coming behind them, that the first wave falls dead in the insecticide and the subsequent waves merely walk on the dead bodies, keeping themselves out of the poison and safe from harm.

Gold warned people not to spray any pesticides inside their computers, but to simply call in professionals to avoid mixing up poisonous concoctions or storing partly used, potentially harmful insecticides.