Standing Water and Red Ants

Angie and I went over the levee about a week ago and had a picnic. While we were there we saw numerous turtles, egrets, and a bird with a broken wing. In fact, we spent half of our time trying to capture the bird with the bum appendage. Not that we could do anything about the wing, but we figured we could take it to someone who could. Plus, we figured the bird was going to wind up in another animal's digestive tract if we didn't try to do something. Well, the bird proved to be quite elusive. So, there's no happy ending to this part of the story.

We had so much fun on our first picnic that we decided to reenact the event on Friday. However, in less than a week, the river had risen. The road that we normally take to get to the picnic tables was shut off with a large gate. Just a few yards away, you could see why...the water covered the road. Not to be deterred, we drove closer to the river and decided to eat just outside of our car. I forgot to tell you that we had taken Duke along on this trip and he was itching to get into the water.

Before we stopped, Angie spotted a baby duck that was diving under the water, over and over. She tried to film him but the sunlight glare was so bad that she couldn't see the viewfinder on the camera. Therefore, very little of the duck is seen on the attached video. You can, however, see how close we were to the river's edge. I pulled the car slightly off the road and exited the car. Angie started taking out our picnic fixings and was trying to hold Duke back from lunging into the water. I told her, "Don't fret, I will handle Duke." And after I took control, Duke immediately jumped out of the car and started wading in the water. Since we didn't know if the depth of the terrain that he was standing on, we called him back to the car. About the same time, Angie started screaming. Turns out that she was standing in a bed of red ants. I tried to knock the ants off of Angie and corral Duke at the same time. I wish you could have seen the jig Angie was performing. She had moves that I've never seen...LOL. Unfortunately, she was bitten multiple times on her feet. During the process, Duke hopped into the water again. I finally got him back in the car and noticed the ants were all over my boots. I shook them off, entered the car, and we took off for the other side of the levee.

When we were near Forsythe Park, Angie observed Duke jumping back and forth in the back seat. She screamed, "There are ants all over Duke!" (Don't you wish you could have filmed all of this?) I stopped the car, pulled Duke out, and Angie and I began knocking ants off of him. It looked like hundreds of ants on him. During the process, Angie was bitten numerous times again...this time on her arms. Duke, of course, didn't understand what was happening; but we could tell he was uncomfortable. After we rid him of the ants, we looked at each other reluctantly and mutually agreed to go home. However, our surprises weren't over yet. Half of the ants that were previously on Duke were now in my car. My car had become a traveling red ant bed. We spent another 10-15 minutes killing them, ant by ant. Needless to say, this is one picnic we don't want to reenact.

It reminded me of the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons. It seems like everytime they had a picnic, black army ants would invade and disrupt the event. Well I'm here to tell you that the army ants can't hold a candle to the red ants that we encountered on Friday. Two hours after our lunch, I was still finding ants in my car! Standing water and red ants...what a combination.


If you look really close, you'll see the ripples from the duck on the left of the screen. He makes a brief appearance there too.



Angie filmed this prior to the ant bed episode. Duke really wanted to get into the river.