Posted on 08/05/2015 8:19:57 AM PDT by w1n1
As any law enforcement officer knows enemies come in all shapes and sizes. To Florida law enforcement officers one such enemy is the fire ant. Small pesky critter whose bite stings ferociously.
While conducting a traffic stop on a busy two-lane road I had asked the driver for their license and registration and then returned to my vehicle to check their credentials. This is when I felt the sudden yet all-too-familiar stings on my ankle and leg. When I looked down I noticed that my foot was entirely engulfed in fire ants.
The roadway where I conducted this traffic stop is very narrow and I had to be careful entering or exiting my vehicle to ensure not stepping into oncoming traffic. Hastily, I kicked off my boot but continued to get stung inside my uniform pants. I pulled off my sock because it too was covered in fire ants. I carefully held my boot and sock out of the car window, and shook them violently to get rid of the ants. In doing so the sock flew out of my hand into the oncoming traffic which launched it about 50 feet passed the vehicle I had pulled over.
This was right about the time my 911 dispatch advised that...... Read the rest of the story here.
Red ants are not fire ants.
I am sure that there are people here who know a lot more about the pesky little critters than I do... I think it is weird how there will be several crawling around on you unnoticed and then they all sting at the same time which causes confusion about what is going on.
There are two types of fire ants in Florida, the red imported fire ant (RIFA), followed by the much less common Solenopsis geminata (Fabricius), the tropical or native fire ant.
I had to pull regular fire ant duty to keep them out of the yard in Mississippi. Once I spotted a mound, I filled a 2 1/2 gallon bucket up with water and set in on the stove. Once it was boiling, I carried it out to the mound. Fire ants will swarm out of the ground at the least provocation.
Boiling water always worked. And the dead grass in the cooked spots didn’t have to be mowed.
After working outside for 30 years in Broward i decided,
Fireants and Sand spurs are Fl State Plant and wildlife.
Had a friend go out at night in the dark bare foot to take out the garbage and stepped in a “hill”.He was a mess and went to the ER.Not funny
The article says the driver went to jail and the cop went to the ER. Seriously? The ER for any bites? I’ve been bit many times and never went to the ER.
AMDRO
stand in a mound of fire ants for 30 seconds macho man.
They are actually illegal immigrants from South America. The queens wear Burkas.
I do remember very well what happened next. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was out in the yard, pulling weeds. My husband had been fussing that I was not supposed to be "working" on a Sunday, but I felt we called it "working" for lack of a better word, but it was not really working. But it bothered me. At a certain point I stood up, looked at the sky, and said something like "Lord, if it is wrong to work in the yard, You let me know". Almost instantly I felt the familiar sting, my right foot was completely covered with fire ants and they were biting like crazy. I washed them off with the hose and, looking at my foot, figured it would be so swollen in the morning that I would not be able to put my shoes on. Then I remembered what I had read and, since I had used roll-on deodorant with baking soda for years, I figured I had nothing to lose. I went in the house and covered my foot with the deodorant. To my surprise, the next morning I did not have any blisters. Well, to be honest, I had one. It was higher than my ankle and it was obvious I had missed it the day before. It was so amazing, I have carried a bottle of roll on in my pocket book ever since. You don't know the number of children I have treated with it! I also keep one with the garden tools. Believe me, IT WORKS!
Don’t sell them short.
I have not felt the sting of the fire ants in Florida, but when I lived in the Philippines as a kid, I had a brand new pair of boondockers I was all hot and bothered to try out clumping around in the jungle.
I was with a friend, and we stopped in a clearing. While we talked, I became aware of something crawling on me, and looked down to see one of my boots and pant legs with what we called fire ants.
As soon as I looked at them, as another poster above said, they seemed to begin stinging or biting me all at the same time, inside my boot, inside my pants...I wonder if they do that because as soon as you see them, your body probably immediately tenses up or something, and they all feel it as a threat?
The closest sensation I can compare it to was once when I was in the back seat of a car as a teenager, and someone in the front tossed a lit cigarette out the window. It came back in, unseen to me, and dropped between the seat cushion and my bare, un-shirted teenage torso. That pain of the single lit cigarette butt on my bare back was what each bite felt like.
I madly hopped away, pulling the boot off and raising my pant leg to smash them. That was forty five something years ago, and I remember it vividly as if it were yesterday.
It doesn’t need mentioning that I added Fire Ants to something I look for anytime I commune with nature! (that includes, sharks, grizzly bears, hornets nests, poison ivy...:)
Been there. Done that. Not on purpose of course. I’ve always told my wife that I can’t dance but I danced a lot that day. But I still did not go to the ER.
We had fire ants, now we have Caribbean Crazy Ants. They drive out the fire ants.....................
You’ve obviously never met up with the Fire Ant. I was bitten a dozen times on my leg and it made me dizzy. A 10 year old girl here was killed by fire ants a few years back......................
I read (I think in one of Peter Capstick’s books) about ants in Africa which will gather in their hundreds on a sleeping person and upon a pheromone signal, all bite/sting at once. The assault puts the victim into shock and the ants feed at their leisure. He related a tale of a woman who placed her baby under a tree while she foraged. When she returned the child had been reduced to nearly a skeleton. Ugghh!
RIFA is listed as one of the most destructive insects from a financial perspective. Areas fully infested with them become uninhabitable by humans, and they cannot be eradicated once firmly established.
Good advice!
Heh, I have been having my insect encounters with a hornet and two honeybees lately, and I have to admit, the honeybees are pretty mild in comparison from a pain perspective. Just this past weekend, one flew down the back of the collar of my shirt, and my wife thought I was going to wreck the car. It stung me, and having it wiggle was worse than the pain, which wasn’t much.
My encounter with the hornet, while far more painful, was funnier in retrospect, because we were driving down a road, and the hornet dropped onto the seat right between my legs, which were bare because I was wearing shorts.
As I watched (also checking the road ahead, behind and beside me, if one can have one eye doing one thing and the other something else) that damn thing crawled this way and that, then, as I had raised my ass off the seat, it climbed right in and up to my butt crack!
I slammed on the brakes (there were no cars around me) and that blasted thing stung me three times, each one a lot more painful than the honeybee sting, but not as painful as those ants.
I must say, it unnerved me so see that hornet walk right into my shorts and feel it walk up my leg to the...er...junction!
When I lived in the Philippines as a kid, I had a nest out in front of my house. We did a lot of shell-diving, but it was always a problem trying to get the darn animal out of the shell completely. There was always some piece that would stay and stink.
That is, until my friend suggested I drop the freshly caught shells on top of that nest. Those ants would scour the inside of the shell so completely they were clean as a whistle.
Being kids, we would put lizards, frogs and bugs on them, and the ants would leave a little lizard skeleton or hollow bug carapace in no time at all. They did that very well.
Some people are more reactive to insect venom than others. I got over 80 bites once from some particularly toxic fire ants and considered going to the ER. I was too sick and to do anything for a few days and could barely walk because my legs were so swollen. The only good fire ant is a dead fire ant.
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