Fire Ants

To me, one of the definite drawbacks of living in Texas is all the nasty creepy crawly stuff. I've never lived anywhere with quite the variety, size, and quantity.

Caleb had his first experience with fire ants the other day. A few of us had gone to the park to play a game and Caleb was just running around having fun. He went over to this fence and was standing on a dirt pile that ended up being a big ol' fire ant hill. He just stood there with this grimace on his face that will be forever ingrained in my memory. We ran over and the fire ants were all over his feet and crawling up his pants. The poor kid is a trooper though. He didn't even cry, just made this sad little whimper as we yanked his flip flops and pants off and swatted away the rest.

Maybe I'm just a wimp, but I think those things seriously hurt! My first and only (hopefully!) encounter with them was last summer when I was buckling Caleb into the car and inadvertently stepped in a pile on the edge of our driveway that I didn't know was there. They swarmed my foot in just seconds and it really did feel like my foot was on fire for like 10 minutes.

The picture is kind of gross, but here are Caleb's poor feet. He had these nasty marks up and down his legs and on his feet: