Fire ants

The entomological landscape of our backyard was rather...homogeneous to say the least. If it didn't fly or build a web, the fire ants got 'em. Larger grasshoppers, banana spiders, bees, wasps, flies and the occasional tenacious cricket were the only variation from fields and fields of fire ants.* Taken alone, a fire ant is not a very threatening thing. They are about the size of harmless black ants or sugar ants, albeit ominously colored in black and red, a single sting will cause local irritation only (occasionally a puss-filled wound the size of a zit if you scratch it too much), in short, not the toughest kid in school. But, what they lack in physical presence, they easily make up for in numbers and shear ferocity.

When one dares disturb a fire ant's black mound, unlike other ants who merely attempt to repair it and prevent invasion, fire ants send out scouts for retaliation. When they find you they do not attack at once, oh, no, they are much too crafty for that, a fire ant knows her weaknesses. Instead they release a pheromone, attracting squads of ants like magnet, and climb ever surely up your leg. Once thirty or so ants have worked there way up your leg, that is in when they strike and the pain begins. Many an unsuspecting Rugglet's carefree gamboling was viciously interrupted by a sprint to the hose, the only tool that could effectively remove the stinging ants, latched on by their little tiny jaws, body curled for continual stinging. Any dead animal, any pile of cat food, was sure to have a trail of fire ants leading from it to halfway across the yard. Time spent by Rugglets following these trails (or attempting to distrup their supply lines by wiping away their scent trails) all together probably totals to several months.

Despite our natural animosity to them, we generally respected the fire ants as a force of nature, uncontrollable and untamed. When we finally destroyed the armies of an invading bumblebee queen with nothing but a trampoline net and a metal pipe, we chose the fire ants, not ourselves, to be the bee's executioners. They became a symbol of toughness and resourcefulness. An invasive species, fire ants spread north from South America, but no climate proved insurmountable to them. Even Texas flash-floods weren't enough wipe them out; the conniving buggers would clump into grapefruit-sized living barges and float down ditches ready, like the rest of us Texans, to rebuild after the storm.

My first disappointment when we moved to New Jersey came when I got out of the moving truck and I found a small black ant hive and knocked it apart with my finger. The poor creatures looked more confused than angry, and I quickly let them alone, leaving me longing for my old childhood nemesis, the fire ant.


*There was one kind of ant that didn't get pushed around by fire ants, little red and grey ones that lived only in our rocky driveway. Even smaller than fire ants, they never attack humans, don't spread very rapidly, and were so little and cute we generally called them sugar ants. However, whenever a fire ant colony felt uppity and wanted to wipe them out, you could always tell by the rings of dead fire ants the sugar ants would neatly form around their modest nest.