Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 15:51:11 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Jim Felley Subject: Fire Ant alert MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I lived in the South a long time before I came to DC, and have had lots of experiences with fire ants. One point to consider: In the same manner that 'killer bees' have not depopulated South America, fire ants have not driven humans out of the South. So evidence suggests that people (even birders), can coexist with them. Birders have a special problem that makes life in the south more problematical than for others. We tend to walk about with our noses in the air. Fire ants, like water mocassins, tend to be on the ground. I have come close to stepping on both. I recommend keeping an eye on where you plan to step next. But since we're birders, we're supposed to be alert to our environment. The diagnostics given so far are correct. When a fire ant nest is disturbed with a stick or a foot, the ants boil out in a frenzy that I have not seen matched by any other ant. Floods force them from their nests, and they crawl up any object exposed above the flood waters. Once this was my seine, and I have fascinating pictures of some of these 'fireballs'. When crawling on your body, the ants will swarm harmlessly until the first one gets it into its tiny mind to bite you. The pheromone released by the biting ant induces all the others on you to bite at the same time, and this is excruciating. Their 'bite' is really a bite with their bacteria-laden mandibles, then a sting from their other end into the open wound. Thus, fire ant bites tend to become infected. All in all, quite nasty, and so good luck to all of us! Jim Jim Felley Smithsonian Institution irmss668@sivm.si.edu ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================