March 19, 2004
VELOCIMAN VERSUS THE ANTS
Okay, that's a reference to Leiningen Versus the Ants, a 1938 Esquire short story by Carl Stephenson, wherein an Amazonian plantation owner faces a swarm of army ants ten miles long and two miles wide, stripping buffaloes to bones on their inexorable march to Leiningen's place. Standard reading fare for an 11-year-old boy, in other words.
I must insert these explanatories, because I find my culture references are getting a little too obscure lately. Making pun on the name of a girl in my fourth grade class may slay me, but you're not getting anything out of it, are you?
So: to fire ants. Viscious beasts, formed into a philogynist society where a select handful of males are sperm donors, the vast remainder are eunuchs. Extremely hard working eunuchs. Red fire ants arrived in the Port of Mobile in the 1930's from South America, in the soil used as ballast in cargo ships. Since then they have spread as far east and north as North Carolina, as far west as Texas.
For these tiny creatures that is the same as if you or I were to walk to the moon and back twice. Roughly. Actually, I just made that comparison up, but the enormity of the venture attends.
So I get these anthills, step in them occasionally, and marvel at the pus blisters on my feet. I treat with Amdro, which normally works, the eunuch taking the Godiva Chocolate of Pesticides to his Queen, for her joy. My problem, I believe, is I am infested with bisexual ant colonies. I get Rosie, but I don't get Kelli. I get LaVerne, but I don't get Shirley. I get Thelma... never mind. The point is taken.
Winter neglect created two vast subterranean colonies I'd missed. First treatment killed off half of each colony, but I had to treat again to get the Hechean remnants.
I'll be glad to give you an update in a week or so, if you're interested. Or not.