We have all heard horror stories about uninvited guests that came to dinner - and never left. Well, the lowly fire ant is one such real-life story. I am told that the fire ants arrived on the Mississippi or Alabama Gulf Coast nearly a century ago, as stowaways on a freighter from South America. The Gulf Coast "looked like home" to the fire ants, and actually it was even better than home because there were no naturally occurring predators for them to deal with. So, like uninvited guests, the fire ants came to visit, and stayed, and prospered, and took over completely. For a long time, I thought of fire ants as being "the other guy’s problem" because, fortunately, they were "not in my back yard". So actually, I never gave the fire ants much thought in those days.
Unlike the fire ants, ticks were very much "in my back yard", particularly in the Texas Hill Country which had an abundance of deer for them to "snack" on. So I devoted a lot of thought to ticks in those days - thoughts that were less than charitable, and thoughts that were directed mostly toward how to get the fiendish little critters detached from my skin following a walk in the woods.
I recall one afternoon when a friend accompanied me as I roamed through the back pasture. We stopped to rest, and seated ourselves on some convenient stumps under an oak tree. After a few minutes, I noticed a large brown stain about twice the size of my hand that had appeared on my friend’s trouser leg. As we continued our rest break under the oak tree, we speculated about what he had brushed against. Could it be cedar sap? Could it be dirt? Could it really be moving up his leg? We looked more closely, and sure enough the spot was moving - slowly but surely - up his leg. That pretty much ruled out cedar sap and dirt. The moving stain, twice the size of my hand, was actually hundreds of thousands of tiny little ticks, each and every one of whom was looking for a snack. And my friend was their intended fast food! The onset of panic was instantaneous, but too late. The ticks were nearly microscopic and very hungry. Once they attached themselves, they were all but invisible. The only way you could find them was to follow the itch. Despite all of my friend’s efforts, complete removal of the brown hoard of ticks was a memorable and miserable experience that lasted for several days.
In the late 1960’s the fire ants reached the Texas Hill Country. We all wondered what was causing those huge mounds of dirt that spontaneously appeared all over the fields and pastures after each rain. However, our suspense and uncertainty was short lived. One ill-advised kick or misplaced step was sufficient to fully educate the uninitiated, and even the most ardent of "nature lovers" became "true believers" once they the got on the business end of thousands of tiny angry fire ants. The predictable result was decades of bad press for the fire ants, accompanied by decades of unrelenting efforts to fully eradicate them, all to no avail. The fire ants came to dinner, and stayed. Now they are practically part of the family, and there is little hope that they will ever leave.
What a disaster!
Oh really?
How do you know?
About a decade after the arrival of the fire ants, I noticed something that was really puzzling. I hadn’t seen a tick in years. I used to scratch and scratch after each walk in the woods, but now I just spent my time stepping around fire ant mounds. It turned out that ticks looked pretty much like "snacks" to the fire ants, and fire ants are world famous consumers of "junk food".
"Advantage number 1!"
Incidentally, it turns out that fire ants like to eat termites almost as much as they like to eat ticks. In fact, the fire ant’s motto seems to be - ‘If it is not a rock, it is probably a "snack" - so eat it!’
"Advantage number 2!"
I would not say that ticks and termites have become extinct, nor would I say that fire ants have become my favorite critters. But ticks certainly are not much of a problem any more, termites are less common in the rural areas, and I have learned, through bitter experience and frequent reminders, how to walk around, rather than on, the fire ant mounds.
So, what’s the point of all this?
Next time you want to "cuss a critter", take a moment to consider whether that critter may just turn out to be an unexpected blessing in disguise.
Last updated 03/23/2001