Mother's Day

For Mother's Day I went over to my Aunt Shauna's house for dinner. On the way over there, I stopped at my parent's house to carpool with them since their house is right on the way. We had to stop at my dad's work to pick up some boxes for my Aunt and we traded my Dad's car out for his work truck. My mom and I were walking over to the passenger side of the truck and I noticed that the ground felt a little uneven. I looked down and saw a huge ant hill with these ugly little creatures below crawling around the hole.

If you can't guess what they are from the picture, these are fire ants!

Once I saw the red color, I immediately thought to myself, I need to move away from this ant hill before they start crawling on me. So I moved away back out by my dad's car while my mom and I waited for my dad to move the truck out. While I was standing there, I felt a little stinging sensation on my leg. I rubbed my leg, thinking it was just a reaction from shaving earlier that day, but as I rubbed my leg I felt a bump under my pant leg. I pulled my pant leg up and out fell two red ants! Dirty little buggers bit me! Instantly my leg started burning and felt like it was on fire. My mom slathered Melaleuca oil and gel, which helped a little, but it still burned. The rest of the evening at dinner it kept throbbing off and on. When I got home I put more oil on it, but the burning didn't stop for a good 4 hours after I got home. The bite had turned bright red and I had a huge swollen bump on my calf. The picture below doesn't quite do it justice. I looked online about red ants and it turns out that the venom doesn't actually come from their bite, but from their sting. They bite you with their mandible's and then sting you with their abdomen while turning a circle. The ants also send out a warning signal to the other ants, once their hill is disturbed, to attack. So glad I got away from the ant hill when I did, or it could have been so much worse.

The burning finally stopped before bedtime, but the next day it started to itch like crazy. All day at work I had to try and focus on not scratching it. When I got home that night I took some benadryl and was able to have some relief from the itching so I could sleep. It's been a month now since I got the bite and there is still a faint red mark where I was stung. Needless to say, I will be running if I ever come across a red ant hill again. I now know, first hand, why they are called fire ants!