re: Fire ants in the garden

We have red dirt clay. When fire ants make a bed in the tilled garden they are indistinguishable from the surrounding dirt. You just cannot see them.

That's the scene when thirteen-year-old me was chopping some weeds in shorts and sandals. I was almost finished when the ambush happened.

I found out that day that fire ants coordinate their biting. They don't bite as soon as they get on you. They wait until their numbers have built, then one of them counts to three. They all bite at once. Then, you run from the garden, yelling, slapping at yourself like a fool, making a beeline to the water hose.