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Thursday, January 15, 2009

HELP! Army Ants!

Where I live in Africa we have invasions of "Driver Ants". We also call them "Army Ants". When they are hunting for food they scatter about but when they have found food and are transporting it to their hideout, they march in columns. To see a YouTube video of Driver Ants, check out this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taYMcraitqo

These ants have pincers so do NOT step on a column of ants. If even one goes up your leg, "he" will grab on to your skin with his pincers causing PAIN. You will have not be able to just brush him off of you, you will have to pick him off. Now imagine if you have several driver ants crawling up your legs. Sometimes the only way to get them off of you is to take your jeans/slacks off and start taking them off of you one by one!

When Driver ants enter a home they go in search of food so they easily find your kitchen. You had better hope that you washed or rinsed your dishes that day! They will scatter all over the kitchen, looking for food that is available. When they have eaten or carried off what food they want, they will leave.

If you start killing ants, you will have a real mess to clean up. It is best to just let them clean your kitchen for you!

Once I was in bed and I woke to a few ants pinching me. I got up and slept in the living room for the rest of the night because they had not come there. The ants were gone from the house in the morning. P.S. I was NOT eating in bed. Sometimes these ants check out the whole house and some people have even moved OUT for the night!

P.S. More about Ants can be found at the following link:

http://antbase.org/ants/africa/dorylinae/anomma.htm

1 comment:

  1. Sis, a few years back I was installing sensors in the remote areas of Merritt Island Wildlife Refuse and Kennedy Space Center. One day I was attacked by fire ants. It was strange that they crawled up my legs unnoticed and seemed to all attack at the same time. I jumped around stripping off all my clothing as fast as I could. (good it was remote). Wikipedia has a picture that looks much like my legs did for a few days here.

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