Flight of the Fire Ants

I've lived in Austin for about 15 years now. One of my jobs around the house is to do mowing and other yard work on our 3.5 acres. So what I'm saying is I've spent a lot of time in the yard and grass and cutting brush.

Fire ants don't bother me at all. As soon as they start biting and you can take corrective action.

The thing that I hate far more are chiggers [1]. They climb to the tops of blades of grass and wait for a host mammal to brush against them, then they hop aboard. They start climbing up your leg, but they are so microscopic you can't feel them at all. They climb as high as they can, but when the hit an obstruction they don't waste time trying and then burrow into your skin, using enzymes to help dissolve their way in. They feed on skin for a few hours then drop off and hope to complete the next stage of their life-cycle, even before you are aware they were there.

It is common to do yard work and the next morning have a dozen or more itchy, swollen red bumps at the underwear line. They remain itchy for days, far worse than fire ant bites (at least for me).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombiculidae

I was shooting my brothers brand new shotgun (1) ("here, try this") when I backed up and stepped on a fire ant hill. I was getting stung but I didn't know how to make the gun safe so I couldn't just drop it. My brother had to run to my aid and take it. Its funny now but certainly not at the time.

I hate fire ants.

(1) We shot skeet for 6 days in a row! Happy times.

Heh, he mentioned the bracken bat cave. I came here just to post that. I noticed it one time while looking at some "un-qc'd" radar: https://imgur.com/a/rQzgYcx

Basically you see it start as a small red dot, then turning into a larger yellow dot, followed by a green blob that covers a large part of San Antonio and dances around for about 8 hours before going back into the cave.

Every time I read a story like this, I have a strong urge to move 10-20 degrees further from the equator.

I read that as "Flight of the Fine Arts". I guess "r" is just a subset of "n", so they're easy enough to switch up if you're not paying close attention, especially if they're both in the same phrase, and if the switched up phrase is more common.

Not surprising. I have worked with different ant sp. where males fly to mate.