Bugs are, generally, welcome visitors to most people’s gardens and fields. Though there are some that are unwelcome – ones who shouldn’t be there in the first place. In other words: invasive species.

Asian giant hornets, German wasps, and Asian tiger mosquitoes are a few of them. Another example would be the red imported fire ant, known as the RIFA for short. Its actual scientific name, though, is Solenopsis invicta.

This ain’t your everyday, friendly, crumb-carrying garden ant.

Solenopsis invicta is a nasty, bitey, greedy invasive species that should never have been on US soil in the first place. When unwelcome critters make their way into a country, the people there are forced to find ways to deal with them.

One guy has thought of the most metal way to deal with these fire ants. Literally.

Anthill Art, as his channel name suggests, is all about dealing with these unwelcome, imported red fire ants. I’m sure we’re all wondering the same thing – how?

Dealing with ants can get messy and uncomfortable. One wrong move and they’re all over your clothes. Still, someone’s gotta do something about them, especially if they’re as destructive as the RIFA.

So Antill Art’s solution is to use molten metal.

With a pot of molten hot aluminum, those ants won’t know what hit them. The RIFAs cause an estimated $5 billion dollars worth of damage to the US ecosystem per year. From ruining crops, farmlands and displacing animals, to generally just being a problem to people (by biting them and pillaging food).

First things first, he needs to be sure the destruction can be contained. He’s only targeting the ants, after all. The solution is to put lots of sand around the ant colony’s mound to prevent the molten metal from seeping any further.

And now it’s time to pour it in.

It’s pretty much Pompeii but with ants.

Into the colony, it goes and the destruction slowly shows itself from the inside out.

Smoke comes out of the dirt and sand, and there’s a visible pulsating and “breathing” motion from the mound. Every last one of the destructive ants in there is burned up by the molten metal.

The melting hot substance fills every last inch of the mound, and every ant in there goes down with it.

When it’s all over, the aluminum cools and hardens into a solid, metallic state.

Now it’s time to dig it out and see what happened.

With careful and precise removal of the sand first, then the surrounding soil, the aftermath becomes visible. Anthill Art needs a shovel to get the whole structure out. I’d guess being solid metal would make it quite a bit heavier.

Now that he’s pulled his handy work out, he needs it cleaned up before he can display it.

There are no more fire ants to be seen here.

A quick rinse from the hose gets all the sediment off the solid aluminum ant colony. The metal has been cast perfectly into a replica of the colony’s interior. You can see where all the tunnels and passages would have been.

It’s an oddly beautiful thing to look at, even if it took a whole lot of destruction and dead ants to make.

To be fair, getting rid of these invasive ants is never a bad thing.

The molten metal method makes sure that the target ants, and only those ants, are taken out.

Combined with the sand that contains the destruction, there’s no way the fire ants can escape to start a new colony. It’s a surprisingly contained and efficient way of taking them out.

It also makes for a very pretty display piece, as Anthill Art shows here.

He took the home of some destructive, unwelcome insects and turned it into something worthy of coffee table art. Props to him!

Watch the video below!

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Source: Anthill Art on YouTube, Solenopsis invicta on Wikipedia