Small red ants with ferocious attitude and burning sting are making life miserable at the allotment. There is a huge colony of them along the grass strip between my allotment and the one next door. All that rain in July doesn’t seem to have drowned them, but I notice that they have carefully aligned their tunnelling with the highest ridge between the two gardens.
F has been stung (or bitten) every time she goes and spends some time up there. I can’t work out why it took her so long to realize what the problem was; if I went as red as that, swelled up like her legs did and got all those really big blisters on me, I wouldn’t got near the place again. (Mind you, you wouldn’t see it under my fur; whereas she looks positively poisonous with those red splotches and blistered bits on her white, furless skin!)
To be fair she has been gardening in a full boiler suit and those really big boots up to her knees since she wised up to what was biting her legs, and that must have been nearly as hot as wearing a fur coat this last weekend. Now she has got bites all over her hands and arms because she stupidly washed the new spuds in a big bucket of water and a few ants floated to the top and bit her arms. After that she ‘declared war on fire ants’ and I even got to ride in my posh sports car when she want up there to do whatever ‘declaring war’ means. It was a good opportunity to watch the shed-building activities on a nearby garden. Nice shed; I like the verandah part facing the sun.
Fire ants aren’t nearly as interesting as my bees (maybe because I have no vantage point for watching them and I definitely don’t want to walk on them and get fire ants between my toes). Anyway, although bees CAN sting, they don’t have attitude like fire ants do, so they don’t sting nearly so often. Besides, bees die when they sting so it is an act of ultimate sacrifice, but fire ants can sting over and over again, so they are just plain mean.
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