[leps-talk] Cut Off, LA - 4/24/02

[Anne Kilmer]

Leptraps at aol.com wrote:

> Back in the early 1980s, a fine fellow by the name of Vince Lucas joined on a 
> late November trip to south Florida. During a stop at the I.F.A.S. Station in 
> Homestead, Vince and I were working the Loquat trees for Chlorostrymon 
> Maesites and C. simaethis when Vince stopped to paper his catch. He sat on a 
> fire ant mound. Fire ants can be sexy buggers!
> 
> As a result, Vince still holds the world record for removing ones pants, he 
> is even faster than the great Bill Clinton!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Leroy C. Koehn
> 202 Redding Road
> Georgetown, Kentucky
> USA          40324-2622
> Tele.: 502-570-9123
> Cell: 502-803-5422
> E-mail: Leptraps at aol.com
> 
> "Let's get among them"



Leroy, some of these folks have not encountered fire ants. I suspect 
they will meet some, when they go down to the Keys with you to check out 
the Blues.
So ... what fire ants do is very quietly tiptoe up your legs, inside 
your trousers ... hundreds of them, tiptoe, tiptoe. Then somebody yells 
"Fire!!!!" and they all bite at once.
And they keep biting, and some of them are on your shoes, and many of 
them are in places some of us don't have, and the pain is exquisite, and 
it will keep on hurting for weeks and weeks.
I am told that the lesions heal up faster if you don't scratch those 
little white blisters. I wouldn't know.

I haven't encountered fire ants in many years, since they moved out of 
my yard when the white-footed ants, Technomyrmex albipes, moved in. 
Those ants tend insects, and I'd sure like to know whether they tend 
blue butterflies. If they do, we may have a solution to the 
bethunebakeri/ant problem.
"Let's get among them" indeed.

Anne Kilmer







 
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