5 Highly Effective Ways to Skin an Ant

5 Highly Effective Ways to Skin an Ant, ummmm, Kill an Ant…yeah, that’s better.

First, you can’t really skin an ant, because they have no skin, but rather a highly adaptive exoskeleton that makes them very tough to skin, but sometimes those little bastards are so annoying that you’d really like to skin them. So the name of this article should have nothing to do with skinning an ant, which is why I changed it.

1. Step on the little bugger with your foot.

This technique is tried and true and involves a very direct and succinct movement of one’s foot right down on top of said ant. The dangers of this technique are quite evident however. Assure yourself that you are least 50 times heavier than the ant in question. Ants can carry up to 50 times their weight, so if you are not at least 50 times heavier than the ant, he or she will likely bench press you and carry you off into his/her little catacomb where you will be wholly consumed. Warning! Do not attempt this procedure with bare feet. Ants are known to bite their attacker and then spin around ninja-like and squirt formic acid from their abdomen into the wound
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2. Stab them with a knife.

Stubby McFarland, grand champion ant killer at the most recent Hymenoptera Games in Pigswallow, Australia, claims that stabbing an ant is “like making love to a kangaroo. It ain’t easy but it’s gotta be done.” He advocates the use of a small, mobile steak knife and quick, repeated jabs in the general direction of the target ant. Warning! This technique is only marginally effective and ant-killer-wannabes without excellent hand-eye coordination should only attempt after consuming massive amounts of OxyContin and/or whiskey.

3. Eat them.

This technique was made popular in the 1920s by an Edward Bear of Hundred Acre Wood when he left an open pot of honey near the entrance to Eeyore’s shady hovel and the pot endured a complete ant infestation. Edward, being the pudgy, honey-loving glutton that he was, attempted to rid the pot of the ants, but, when he failed miserably, he just ate the honey; ants and all. While the technique is not necessarily practiced with the aim or goal of killing the ant, it is quite effective in accomplishing the task. Warning! The formic acid in ants is toxic and eating large quantities of ants could result in acid indigestion. According to www.RecipeSource.com
, mixing 1742 large ants with three cups of melted chocolate should ameliorate the effects of the acid. Bon appétit!

4. Guillotine them.

The successful guillotining of ants has a long and storied history. On April 25, 1792, highwayman Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier and his pet ant, Gustave, were executed in France. While Pelletier’s execution garnered the most hype, the successful execution of Gustave launched an ant guillotining revolution in continental Europe before being brought to the United States in the 1820s. Guillotining ants has always been tricky, however, because positioning the ant properly beneath the guillotine is fraught with danger, especially considering an ant’s propensity to squirm when it believes it might be guillotined. This problem was solved in 1955 with the invention and subsequent commercial release of cyanoacrylates (commonly sold in the US as Super Glue). Now, guillotiners need only squeeze a daub of the tactile adhesive on the guillotine bench, adhere the ant to the adhesive, and release the guillotine. Warning! Idiots who glue their own fingers to the bench with the ant are subject to finger removal.

5. Shoot them with a gun.

This technique is self-explanatory. Aim gun at ant. Pull trigger. Soren Sorenson of the Danish Army holds the world record using this technique when he successfully killed 10,475 ants with a single blast from an elephant gun. He was heard to yell, “Remember the Maine” as he fired the gun, apparently still angered at the Spaniards for the whole “Danish Ant Debacle” of 1999. While the elephant gun is widely used in competition, rifles, shotguns and, more recently, paint guns are also effective in killing ants.

Warning! Do not attempt this technique if ants are actually in your pants.