This is what a fire ant bitten leg looks like 4 days after the event.I've been harassing my roommates with tales of sitting on the lanai at night in t-shirt, shorts, and bare feet while they endure freezing nights.
It's not all good. We had three days of complete cloud cover, temp-80's, humidity-90's, and low, low, ceiling. If I were as tall as Uncle Joe I could reach up a brush the cloud cover with the tips of my fingers.
It presses down on me. I got what I now refer to as my "low pressure headache". It's not really a headache, just a tightness around the forehead to the base of the skull. Doesn't hurt, but is annoying and distracting. It bears down on me.
However, it's pretty good weather for all my gardening projects. When there is no cover, I work the new bed in the back yard because the sun doesn't hit me till around 11:00. Once that happens I'm through. Sweat pours into my eyes and it's just over for me. This is hard to endure for a girl from central coast California where it never, never, gets hot. In the afternoon, I may work on the bed in the front of the house because now it's shaded.
So the cloud cover is good for gardening. I started a bed 20' x 6' by removing the St. Augustine grass (think highly invasive, runner spreading, Bermuda grass on steroids). I work by sections about 1' x 6'. Outline the section with a shovel, go around a second time using the shovel as a lever to loosen the solid turf roots, divide the section up into 4-6 smaller sections, and then begin pulling the grass out. It's possible, if you do enough shovel-leverage work, to roll up small sections. But, if you do that, a couple of inches of soil goes with it. If you need to save that soil, and I do, you have to rip up handfuls and shake the soil loose. I like to do this sitting cross legged on the ground.
I finished most of the bed, putting in plants and mulching as I went, and picked up my shovel to outline the final 1' x 6' section when I noticed that the upper corner protruded into a humongous fire ant bed. I was born and raised in Florida and know enough to avoid fire ants. So I got out the fire ant poison (I hate to use this stuff, but I had no intention of battling fire ants for that small piece of ground). Sprinkled the stuff around and gave them a couple of days.
When I returned I gingerly prodded the edge of the ant bed and observed no ant activity. Very cautiously I bent over and pulled out a handful of grass and shook it off. Of course I was wearing gloves! No ant activity. Did it a second and a third time, no ant activity. Good, good. Now that little bit is done, I can go to the end and start working my way back up.
I like to sit on the grass that surrounds the bed to do my grass pulling. I pull out a couple of small sections and then move to the side of the bed so that I can stay on the grass instead of sitting in the dirt I have just exposed. Another small section pulled out and I notice I am perilously close to the rest of that large ant bed. So I move to the inside of the planting bed, sit in the bare dirt I had exposed the previous day, and start pulling grass. Only seconds pass and my legs are burning (there's a damned good reason they call them fire ants!) I jump us, get out of the bed, brush them off with my wet, dirty, gloves; leaving dirt smeared all over me. I check carefully but can see no sign of any ant bed. And I still have two more sections to go.
I tell myself that somewhere deep in the Amazon they probably do this to boys for their rite of passage into adulthood. And since I am already an adult, I can endure this and I need to finish the bed. (Remember when I said I had no intention of battling fire ants for this little piece of land? Apparently my intentions were trumped.)
Watching very, very, carefully, I take my shovel and stand where I think they do not have their hidden nest. I'm going to divide my small sections into even smaller sections and pry it out with the shovel. I found no ants in the grass I was removing but every few seconds I would have to stop and brush off a couple more fire ants. Finished the bed, then dug a hole and planted the last plant for that bed, gaining another coupled of bites in the process. By the I had enough of this particular rite of passage took a break.
Got out of the bed, carrying a few more with me, and hosed down my legs. Learned that a jet of water does not dislodge a fire ant. Oh no, it just makes them curl up into a tight ball and hang on harder. Washed my legs, slipped out of my rubber sandals, washed them, went to the lanai for something cool to drink. When I got my tea and settled down 3 or 4 more crept out from somewhere. Those little things hide exceedingly well. Got a couple of bites on my wrists where some had evidently hidden in my gloves when I was wiping them off my legs. Took my sandals off again and inspected them, turned my gloves inside out and inspected them. Fire ants are much smaller than regular red ants and hard to see. I began to worry about whether any had found their way into my shorts and where I could expect the next bite.
Finished the tea and thought I could safely mulch the area. Dragged a bag of eucalyptus mulch (we boycott cypress mulch--more on that later) around and made sure to stay on the concrete block path where I could see the enemy if it were there. I like to spread mulch with my hands (gloved). It just feels good. So I dumped the bag and began to spread, paying more attention to the exposed dirt (the place where little pain givers hide) than to the mulch. At least until I started feeling bites. Looking down I realized that the mulch was alive with thousands of ants. Fortunately, not fire ants. These were red, much bigger, much less aggressive, but still biting me. Apparently the mulch in the bag offered a cozy home and the ants moved in.
Now I really had enough, even though I still needed to put another bag of mulch down around the final plant. Got outta there, leaving shovel, trowel, and empty mulch bag behind, killed a couple more ants, hosed down my legs and sandals one more time and hit the shower (still a little worried about what might be hidden in my shorts).
Yesterday I summoned up the courage to venture back to the area. I needed the tools. I went well around the old fire ant bed, and stepping briskly, put one foot on the exposed dirt that had not yet been mulched in order to reach the concrete block path and in the nano second that it takes a foot to go down then right back up, half a dozen of them got me again. Damn, they're fast as well as sneaky.
Today I lugged out the last of the mulch, opened the bag and observed carefully before proceeding. Apparently ant free. I dumped it and quickly spread it over the danger area, with a shovel--NOT my hands, and left without a single encounter. But, my general plan is to extend that bed several more feel which means wiping out that large fire ant bed altogether. I'm scared.
About fire ant bites:
- at first they feel like any other biting, stinging, insect
- followed almost immediately by intense burning sensation
- burning lasts quite a while--quite a long while
- each bite produces a large, red, welt
- pus pockets form in the middle of each red welt
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