Ant Buffet

For a moment the corpse moves and thinking it’s still alive, I shift backward from my seat on the ground. The insect that is being consumed by an army of ants has long since expired, but the communal efforts of the tiny insects to break the hopper into pieces have caused it to list. I, with my macabre fascination with the grisly side of nature have spun the scene into an imaginary Zombietown of arthropods. In fact it’s a simple scavenge site and underneath the roiling cloak of ants is a spiny-legged, flightless Eastern Lubber Grasshopper (Romalea microptera). Chances are the lack of useful wings led to death by wheel – and its present state.

How the mouse met its end is a mystery, as is the curious rubble pile surrounding it. Based on the reddish pelage on top and the white below I would say this is a Cotton Deermouse (Peromyscus gossypinus) that once lived in the swamps of the Picayune State Forest east of Naples, FL.

Considering the masses of formic foes piled upon the remains of the snake, you’d think it would be hard to identify the creature beneath. The telltale marking is a yellow band around the neck which makes it easy to identify as a Ring-necked Snake (Diadophis punctatus). I often find this secretive snake under logs or debris on the ground. When threatened they will expose their brightly colored dorsal side to warn would be predators away.

From a distance, the ant traffic was so heavy that it could have been mistaken for a slender snake. The sinuous band of ants ended at a well-picked apart Pig Frog (Lithobates (Rana) grylio). Similar in size and shape to the American Bullfrog (Lithobates (Rana) catesbeiana), only the Pig Frog is found in South Florida as this one was. Both species are sought after for their edible legs. This one kept them but little good that did.

Death is unkind. I certainly have sympathy for all of the creatures that meet with an untimely end, especially those that are victims of human carelessness. In the end, their deaths are not in vain. A colony of ants will feast. 

Things that bite in the Night - the Fire Ant

“Coffee” is usually the first thought that I have upon waking. On this particular day I awoke, panicked, thinking “I need to get my wedding ring off my finger now”. I didn't know why but the band was cutting off circulation to my finger which had swollen to a light shade of grape. The ring itself looked like a hula hoop on a hippo. Butter, Vaseline, WD-40, there was no way I was squeezing out of it.

I found a red bump at the knuckle. It itched so my assumption was I had been bitten. I treated it with “after bite”. I put my hand in ice. I kept it elevated. I tried Benedryl. Nothing was working. The finger was turning a deeper shade of purple and aching like a thumb hit by a hammer. By 10 pm it was time to go to the ER.

In the ER the red bump had grown into a white-capped pustule and the doctor quickly identified what I should have guessed already. As I slept I was bitten by a single Red Imported Fire Ant (Solenopsis invicta). Fire Ants are native to South America but can be found throughout the southern U.S. Back in the 30’s they were inadvertently introduced by a cargo ship docked in Alabama.

They are mound builders that can establish multiple satellite colonies of hundreds of thousands of ants. They inject painful venom to both defend the colony and take down potential prey. In Florida, these ants stand accused of causing the population decline of the Southern Hognose Snake (Heterodon simus) and the Florida Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula floridanus) by consuming incubating eggs.

A White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawn will freeze in place at the sight, sound or smell of danger. If they happen to do so in or around a Fire Ant mound, the ants will begin climbing up the animal and then bite in unison. The bites are not only painful but the itching and swelling can last for four days or more. This of course happens to people as well. Some experience anaphylaxis.

In the ER I was given a choice. Leave the wedding ring unscathed and hope the swelling subsides or cut the ring off to alleviate the pressure and save my finger.

“Cut it off! The ring not the finger”

They did. The swelling subsided and wife insisted I get the ring fixed immediately. 

Everglades Guide Crushed By Free Washing Machine

It could have happened. It almost did and make no mistake - I would have been embarrassed if I had been crushed by a new washing machine. But it would have been worth it. In the middle of the day last Friday I wandered out of my apartment and noticed a washer and dryer next to the recycling bins. They looked new from a distance so I ambled over and lo and behold I have no idea what "lo and behold" means. Apparently someone had vacated their apartment in a hurry and left a delightful assortment of bashed up particle board furniture, a few retro-futuristic lamps and a brand new washer and dryer set.

I darted back to my truck and drove it over to haul my treasure away and like a wolverine, snarled ferociously when prospective free washer and dryer prospectors swung by. Having successfully warded off all appliance competitors I was left with the task of moving these full-sized and ungainly machines into my truck and then up a flight of stairs into my apartment.

Of course I'm in the middle of my work day, but there is no way I am giving up an opportunity to procure my first washer and dryer set. And they are mint!

For a human to carry a washing machine up a flight of stairs by himself is a daunting task. But just a few weeks removed from my Ecuador experience, I am reminded of the powers of Ant who can lift something several times their body weight.

Specifically, the Leaf-cutter Ant was my inspiration. Ma-Le and I had watched a colony of these ants marching through the jungle to an unknown destination. I first noticed a stream of green beneath the Podocarpus National Park's office. On the left, ants with leaves 10x their size carried photosynthetic flags high over-head while on the right a stream of ants returned to cut another leaf .
So direct is their path that these tiny insects cut a swath through the grass. Look close below and you can see a couple heading to the woods.

The leaves are not food. Instead the leaves are food for a fungus that grows on them. The fungus ultimately is the food for the ants but only grows in certain conditions and the ant nest is the perfect place for it to grow. It's hard to step anywhere on the jungle path without having to avoid Leaf-cutters. The one pictured below was well off course. A lone ant climbing the steel wire trail on the suspension bridge to the other side of the river. No friends in sight.

Alone, the ant continued on. As did I with my washer and dryer. I would not be denied regardless of the folly of moving the machine by myself. I didn't have to lift it over my head, but it didn't make it any easier. Lifting it up a step. Holding it. Gripping it. Lifting it up another step and so on until I was on the 12th step. No going back. 2 steps to go. And LIFT!

There would be very little understanding from anyone if the washer had toppled back on me. I would have, without a doubt received a coveted Darwin Award for brilliantly removing myself from the gene pool. Someone might have found me crushed beneath the Whirlpool® Duet HT® Ultra Capacity Plus Front-Load Washer and thought "why didn't he ask for help?" or "At least it was an Energy Star...He would have wanted it that way."

But you never see two Leaf-cutter Ants helping each other with a single leaf. At least that was my justification for not asking for help. In truth an older man offered to help but when he bent down to lift the dryer, I heard several pops that sounded like a kid jumping on bubble wrap. He apologized and departed. A staffer from the apartment complex suggested he couldn't help for liability reasons and a few other people just drove by and stared at the crazy bald guy hoisting a washer up the stairs.

There's something to be said for community. Or lack thereof. For the lowly ants, hundreds of thousands of them perform the same task individually for the good of the colony. I could have used a helping hand. In the absence of assistance, I managed on my own but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. If I had waited for help, someone else might have snagged the goods and I would have been crushed.

Ants - Why Did it Have to Be Ants?

When the water rises - head for high ground. And that's just what thousands of ants did the night of our exhausting horseback adventure.

Cabinas Yambala is just outside the town of Vilcabama and is run by Charlie, formerly of Boston, who has lived in Ecuador since the 70's. When we returned from the mountain he told us he was getting worried that we hadn't returned. It had never happened that people hadn't returned, but having rained an extraordinary amount in 3 hours, the rivers were raging and darkness would make it very difficult to return. I didn't ask what could have been done if we hadn't come back! But now that we were back, we could get cleaned up, have something to eat and sleep.

Sometime after midnight I was woken by Ma-Le who yelled "something bit me". I tapped the lamp on the nightstand and it began to softly glow, illuminating the low-ceiling, wood-framed cabin and revealing a frantic Ma-Le who had discovered not only the ant that had bitten her, but the army of ants that had taken positions on the battlefield of a blanket.

As a kid I was known to exaggerate - someday I'll retell the story of the "100 dead squirrels", but suffice it to say that the lesson I learned in telling that tale was only embellish that which can not be proven to be false. So when I say there were several hundred if not thousands of ants peppering the blanket, pillows, floor and walls I have an honest Ecuadorian who can back up this claim. Just replace the snakes with ants from Raiders of the Lost Ark and this was the scene we'd awoken to.

The super saturated earth outside had left the ants with no alternative but to join us indoors and remarkably, only one ant had taken exception to our presence by biting Ma-Le. Had it not done so, we may have slumbered blissfully unaware of the insects that trekked on, over and around us just as we had trekked the mountain the day before.

But it did bite and woe were the ants who minded their own business. They were brushed off, swept up and escorted back out into the rain. So tired were we from our excursion the day before that we didn't care that they would just trot right back in - 6 legs at a time.

A few thousand ants? Far better than rats, snakes or spiders.

The Agony of the Feet

On one hand there's the luxurious feeling of well-crushed coral sand between your toes that feels like puffs of powder around your feet and on the other hand there's the sickening feeling of soft earth as it delicately collapses and gives way around your foot as the site of hundreds of ants crawling up your leg sends you into panic mode.

It's that time of the year when Brazilian fire ants seem to be everywhere I hike. All it takes is one errant step on their mound and they cling to you and begin heading up. They emit a pheromone that they all respond to so when one says bite - they all bite at once!I've mentioned this back when MaLe was attacked in Key West - the pain of the bite lasts for up to 4 days. It's been nearly 5 days and my bites are still itching like mad. I have about 40 bites, mostly on my feet and they look like little zits. Gross. Lotions and Itch-Aways don't last forever and it hurts enough that scalding water or the idea of sticking my feet on burning coals is tempting. Kids don't try this. Not even in college.

The ant mound I stepped in was covered in palmetto fronds - tough to see. The one pictured above was on a lawn and I didn't step in it so much as I jammed a stick into it for fun. Maybe that's karma, but my rationalization was that fire ants are not native so why not have some fun and go Godzilla on the little beasts. I guess I forgot how the Godzilla movies ended....

Jungle Idol: Three Miles to Nowhere

I don't always lead tours. Part of my job is to give presentations and convince people they want to leave the beach and spend the day in the swamp. So I put on my jungle hat, grab a microphone and do my thing every Monday morning. Monday being my birthday - I gave my presentation and afterwards was praised by a very nice, well-to-do woman in her sixties who said "I can tell you love what you do and that is $&@^! cool!" OK!

As I promised myself, I took the rest of the afternoon off and headed down towards Shark Valley Slough in the middle of the Everglades to check out a spot I'd never been too. There's an old road off the main highway that's gated now and if anyone goes out there I don't know why. It reminds of a song by Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers called Hope and Madness about the resilience of nature and the ability to rebound from our ceaseless abuse - the lyrics go something like this:

Let her lead you so very far away

Where no one can reach you

Spread out wild and wander

And may everything they poison come back stronger

While the rest of us were sleeping

She sent flowers gently creeping.

And the waters slowly seeping

Through the cracks in the pavement

And the cracks in the dam

So now everything we steal away

We know someday she'll take it back again

I walked the pavement on a road to nowhere and reveled in the weeds that pushed up through asphalt the ant hills rising where cars once drove and the moon vines blanketing everything in the distance including a 20 foot tall tree of unknown species at the center of the photo. To the north by 200 miles, the Army Corps of Engineers has systematically removed 52 miles of canals and let the Kissimmee River revert to it's natural state. Along Tamiami Trail, the Department of Transportation will be lifting the road, creating a causeway and letting the water flow. And in the Picayune Strand - they are pulling up hundreds of miles of roads and canals in one of the largest (and failed) developments in US history. Eventually nature will take it back. Imagine if we ended the hostilities against her everywhere.

Near the end of my trek I stopped at a berry bush and noticed a strange shaped leaf. It twitched.And then spread it's wings - as did it's mate. It was a mating pair of Julia Heliconian butterflies - members of the longwing family. The female would fly as they mated and land not far away - hoping for a safe place to work on the next generation. This bird won't be passing along it's DNA. Nothing but feathers - the predator long gone with the tasty parts.I left my forgotten road and headed west on Tamiami Trail. By the time I made it to Shark Valley, the last Tram had departed and the final bikes were rented for the day. I walked the boardwalk and the tram road, smooth and tidy - imagining future cracks - prophesying weeds. The tourists can have their pretty park. I prefer to be off the beaten path. I liked my three miles to nowhere.

Ants in Your Pants

The Red Imported Fire Ant (Solenopsis invicta) was accidentally introduced to the United States in either Mobile, Alabama or Pensacola, FL between 1933-1945. They inadvertently hitchhiked along with imported goods from Brazil and have since spread across many of the southern states, including Florida. They often create large nest mounds of soil, inhabited by thousands of the insects. When disrupted, the first ant to encounter a threat to their home emits a pheromone, alarming the rest of the colony which then defend the nest by all stinging the intruder with vengeance.

Before MaLe's return to Ecuador, we visited the Florida Keys, driving the length of the Overseas Highway from Key Largo down to Key West where we enjoyed the Southernmost point in the Continental US (marked by this black/yellow/red thing),

the 57 "Hemingway Cats" occupying the late writer's historic if not tragically dumpy home

the over hyped Mallory Square and a fantastic sunset over Florida Bay.


But no sendoff sunset is complete without sitting on a mound of fire ants. With only a glowing segment of sun remaining as it submerged into the sea, a frantic MaLe began hoping around, swatting at her back and cursing in Spanish (several words that I am familiar with). I helped brush as many off as I could and pleaded with her to move, but regretfully she was only listening in Spanish at this point and continued to stand in the mound of ants while peeling off clothing. Eventually she understood and moved, but not before being bitten literally from head to toe but the rotten little ormegas.

Fire ant bites are nasty and leave a zit-like swelling for a few days. It's not pleasant. She was calmed by sundown and you'd never know by this picture what she had just endured.

This afternoon it was back to work for me with a trip into the sweltering 98 degree Everglades. As always, I joined my adventurers on the airboat and as we cruised along the well-populated alligator lake, I realized I was being peppered with tiny insects. I looked towards the bow and realized a raft of fire ants had made their way on board and were now being blown on me! I signaled to the airboat captain to stop the boat, which he misinterpreted as go faster, and more and more ants began to fleck my khaki shirt. ANTS! I yelled, but my full-on-freakout fell on deaf ears as the Cadillac engine continued to power the airboats airplane propeller and create just enough noise to drown out what I assumed would soon turn to my panicked sobs.

Fire Ants have the amazing ability to create a mass of ants, or a raft to protect them during floods. Water comes up, they gather in a ball and are magically transported to a new home. In this case - the airboat and eventually on to me. I survived with amazingly only one bite. Maybe the speed in which we traveled carried away the pheromone message to attack. Either way, MaLe and I both survived our ant encounters. Now that the rainy season is here, you gotta watch out for the ants who are constantly shifting their homes to drier ground.
(because it was requested...the MaLe Meez)